I’m Bacckkkk!!!!
Welcome or welcome back to my blog!!!!
If you’re new here, I’m an attending psychiatrist who started blogging as a medical student in 2018 as a way to reflect on my journey in medicine. I grew professionally and personally all while documenting the journey on this blog and social media.
If you’re interested in learning what it’s like for a Barbadian, Christian, business-minded woman to find her way in the field of medicine, I encourage you to go back to my first-ever blog post and follow the journey from there. I, personally, go back and read old blog posts from time to time, and it’s really cool to see how God has directed my steps over the years.
Quick Updates
It’s been over two years since I last wrote and published a blog post. In that time, SO SO much has happened. I can’t even begin to provide a full recap here. But I do want to give an overview of my first year as an attending psychiatrist!
If you’d like to watch one of my updates from residency (I literally haven’t blogged since the beginning of residency!), you can check out the YouTube video below.
My First Year as an Attending Psychiatrist
It’s sometimes hard to imagine that I’m a whole Board-Certified, Attending Psychiatrist. But God is so good, and my dream is now a reality. I work day in and day out to improve the mental health of my patients and church communities around the world. It’s a privelege that I never take for granted.
The Summer Before Starting the New Job
I finished resdiency on June 30th, 2023, a date I had been counting down toward for a long time. My husband and I took the summer off to travel the world! In six weeks, we visited five countries in the Caribbean and Africa. The trip was everything I needed as a means of celebrating the huge milestone of completing my medical training. I did moonlighting shifts in my fourth year of residency and saved nearly 100% of those fund to go toward the cost of the trip and covering our fixed costs during the FUNemployment period.
I highly recommend that graduating residents take some time to REST before starting their first attending roles. Once I got back fron our travels, I quickly transitioned into study mode for the psychiatry boards. Thankfully, I spent sometime in my final “semester” of residency studying, so that I wouldn’t need to worry about studying on my trip.
Starting My First Attending Psychiatrist Job
In the midst of boards studying, I started my first attending job in September 2024. I was VERY excited about this. So much so that I recorded a YouTube video to vlog my first week of being an attending!
Every day, I find myself incredibly grateful for the job that God led me to. I honestly did not intend on seeking an academic medicine job, but somehow, someway, that’s exactly where I ended up. My job is really cool in that every day is very different. Some days, I spend in meetings, research, teaching medical students and residents, and working to engage faith communities in Camden on the topic of mental health. On my clinical days, I split my time between the emergency department and outpatient work. I LOVE that variety for me.
Life in the Midst of Professional Growth
Something I like to remind people is that I’m a human before I’m a psychiatrist. So in the midst of professional growth, there has been even more personal growth! I became an aunt to a second incredibly cute nephew. My husband and I take every moment possible to hop on a plane to visit family, friends, or just spend time together exploring the world. We also bought a new house, and I’ve been getting back into my design mindset to make the house a home. I’m trying my best to reprioritize fitness into my life, as I’ve severely fallen off of my “50 days no excuses” level of fitness. I’m leaning heavily into spiritual growth and connecting with church communities worldwide through my non-profit Christian Mental Health Initiative.
Overall, I am aiming to grow in all aspects of my life, not just the professional. My current theme word for my life is PEACE. I seek peace in all that I do, with God as the center of my source of peace.
I really look forward to getting back into blogging. Just even writing this blog post has given me a bost of energy and excitement that I haven’t felt in a while. Blogging was part of the joy that kept me sane in medical school and the beginning of residency, and now it’s time to keep growing while motivating you to do the same.
Thank you for joining me on this part of my journey!
Peace and blessings,
Dr. Atasha Jordan, MD, MBA
