Doctor’s advice: find an enjoyable career

Addison Haynes, DO, a physician at IU Health Family Medicine – Tipton, shares his journey and passion for medicine in celebration of Doctors’ Day. During his residency, Haynes discovered his love for variety in medical practice.

“In residency, I realized I liked a little of everything,” he says. “You do rotations where you spend four weeks at a time through everything. Got real bored on rotations where we were doing the same thing every day for four weeks straight.”

His favorite rotation was trauma surgery, but the demanding hours made him reconsider.

“I was a med student,” says Haynes. “I was getting to spend like 100 to 110 hours a week in the hospital, which was really cool, until you realize, ‘Oh, I want a life outside of this.’ As a student, it’s fine to work that much, not as [an] adult.”

Haynes ultimately chose family medicine.

“I get to have that long-term relationship with my patients,” he says. “I’ve got patients that I started seeing when they were newborns, and several of them are now 10...I’ve got several patients that I saw as teenagers, and they are now parents, so I'm taking care of their kids. I also get to take care of generations. I have several families that I see, kid, parent, grandparent and great-grandparents.”

Originally from Noblesville, Haynes values the small-town feel of his practice.

“I was working for a smaller hospital network, and then I looked to come over to an academic health institution,” says Haynes. “My choices were to go [to Indianapolis] or to come up north. I like the small-town feel. I like getting to know my patients and getting to know the whole family.”

Pursuing enjoyable work

Haynes offers advice to medical students, emphasizing the importance of passion and continuous learning: “If [you] want to go into medicine, make sure that it’s what [you] enjoy…If you’re pursuing something that you enjoy doing, then it’s worthwhile. There's a lot of delayed gratification that comes from being a doctor. There's a lot of years of study. There's a lot of hard work that goes into it…which has paid off now. I wouldn’t go into medicine for the money. If you’re going into it for the money, you’re in the wrong field.”