Up Front
Pulling Back the Curtain: Linda J. Burns, MD
Continued from page 15
time, and I don’t think it will ever
get any easier. My “rose” is when
I see a patient several years posttransplant who is thriving. There is
nothing better than receiving news
about my patients’ graduations,
weddings, or “giving back” by
raising funds for research.
What is the best advice
you’ve ever received? Do you
have any advice for earlycareer hematologists and
oncologists?
Follow your heart and do what you
love. There will be times when,
for various reasons, you may need
to perform other tasks or serve in
other roles to help out your division
or colleagues. But, remember to
always focus on doing what you
enjoy. If you’re not happy going
to work each day to do the type of
research you’re doing or caring for
patients with the types of diseases
you’re seeing in clinic, then your
career will not be satisfying.
When you interview someone
for a job, what question
do you ask that gives you
the most insight into the
candidate, and why?
Usually all candidates have a longterm goal — “I want to become the
best researcher or clinician I can be,”
“I want to make advances in this area”
— but I also like to know what they
wish to accomplish in the next year,
in the next two to three years. Which
goals have a high likelihood of being
reached; which goals are riskier? A
well-developed short-term, as well as
long-term, career plan signifies to me
that they are more likely to succeed.
How do you keep a healthy
work/life balance? What
makes maintaining that
balance difficult?
This has definitely been a
struggle throughout the years! My
wonderfully supportive husband,
David, is a nephrologist, and we
laughingly tell each other that
there’s a decade we really don’t
remember when each day we just
put one foot in front of the other.
We raised two sons without any
family in the area, so we primarily
relied on before- and after-school
care programs and good friends.
Many times we feel we have to do
everything for everybody all the time,
but I suggest that you do the things
that are most important to you and
your loved ones and let go of the rest.
Here’s a personal example: I always
thought I had to make the birthday
cakes for our sons, so I would come
home the night after being on-call
and start making that birthday cake
even though I was exhausted. Finally,
one year I bought a cake from the
local bakery, and my son didn’t care
at all whether or not I had baked the
cake. Lesson learned.
Along the way I’ve developed
another trick: I keep a list at work of
those tasks I’m currently doing that I
enjoy, those that I may not enjoy that
much but are important to my career,
and those I’m currently doing that I
don’t enjoy or are not adding to my
career. Every few months I review the
list and work towards transitioning
to only the tasks that I enjoy doing or
are important to do.
How do you spend your time
outside of work?
When I get home in the evening I
call the dogs and we go out to “check
the crops,” which is something I
always did with my dad growing up.
Unfortunately, living in an urban area
we don’t have a farm, but we have
six acres. Most of the property we’ve
devoted to growing native prairie,
woodland, and lakeshore plants.
In addition to sports, hiking
and reading for pleasure, I’m also a
seamstress, which dates back to my
4-H club training as a kid. I used
to design and make all my clothes,
but now I sew for our home and last
year taught myself how to upholster
furniture. My first semester in college
I wondered if there was anything
other than science I should explore
and signed up for a class in fashion
design. However, after enduring an
entire hour discussing fabric draping,
I ran back to science. I think it all
worked out well, though! ●
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ASH Clinical News
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October 2014