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Submitted January 2025
By Dr. Robina Poonawala

The Truth about Penguins and Doctors

A sprawling city bustles with the loud racket of morning hour rush. Crowds of commuters hurry past each other. Suddenly, one traveler bumps into another and sets off a shouting match.

This might seem like a typical morning in New York City, but the location is Antarctica and these commuters are chinstrap penguins. Named for facial markings that resemble helmet chinstraps, these flightless two foot tall birds live in and around Antarctica and nest in crowded communities called colonies. Many chinstrap colonies are home to hundreds or thousands of individuals and have a lot in common with manmade urban centers and their inhabitants.

Every November near the start of summer in Antarctica, chinstrap penguins arrive at their breeding grounds. There, they begin construction work. Mated pairs use pebbles to build nests that are up to 20 inches wide, like human neighborhoods arranging their nests side by side. They live in close quarters for safety ‒ a lone nest would be a sure target for skua, a predatory bird that swoops from the sky to snatch chinstrap eggs or chicks.

While penguins have evolved from flying birds, their superpower lies in being the best divers of all birds. To protect from the cold, they have dense feathering, and different species are distinguished by the colors of their heads. Female penguins lay one or two eggs and both parents take turns caring for the eggs. While one stays behind to keep the eggs warm and safe from predators, the other heads out to sea to feed on krill, fish, and squid. Once hatched, they are carefully watched for around three weeks when both parents may have to leave to forage for food while their chicks gather in the safety of the larger group of other young penguins called crèches for warmth and protection. This shared labor is so important that a penguin chick will not survive if it has only one parent. Chicks who are hungry may beg from other parents but there is no fostering, and adults will only feed their own offspring.



By March, when the chicks are nine weeks old and their downy baby feathers have been replaced by waterproof adult feathers, they plunge into the sea and forage for their own food. Mated penguins use calls to identify each other and their offspring. The penguins are monogamous and return to the same breeding partner year after year. As far as scientists can tell, there are no couples therapists or divorce attorneys in the colonies.

Observing penguins reminded me of the importance of community.  We all need connection with each other for communities to survive and prosper and for our children to thrive in their formative years.

We feel security and a sense of contentment when we are with our peers ‒ the human version of the warmth and security that penguin communities model. Just as the penguins huddle together to survive harsh weather, shortage of food, and predators, together in community physicians and their families survive and thrive in spite of a wide variety of challenges, even predators, that we face daily as individuals and as a profession. We just have to stick together!

Dr. Robina Poonawala
Send comments to Dr. Poonawala at robina.poonawala@gmail.com

Submitted January 2025
By Dr. Brian Sayers

Real Change

When this comes out on January 5, there’s one thing we can count on: most New Year’s resolutions have already been abandoned. New Year’s resolutions fail because they are usually quick fixes for bad habits or other problems that involve a solution that is no fun and that we aren’t really all that serious about, often changes that involve weight, exercise, diet, alcohol, or spending. The plan, if it can be called that, typically overestimates the effectiveness of willpower, of muscling through a firmly entrenched behavior pattern, often ignoring the reality that change requires not just bulldozing over entrenched behavior, but actually understanding the behavior and why it makes us unhappy even as we persist in doing it. What some authors call “real change” is, well, real hard. It involves the big things in our lives that stand in the way of contentment, meaning, or honoring our deepest beliefs.

Real change isn’t hatched in a vacuum. It is usually a response to a sense of unease or sadness or yearning. The spark that starts the fire can be anger, grief, regret, shame/guilt, bad habits/addiction, relationship problems or loneliness. Each of these are serious internal feelings that must be explored, their roots understood for lasting change to be possible. One of the most rewarding aspects of working with physicians in PWP these last few years has been to witness and fully appreciate our capacity to make meaningful change. We see it in a variety of life-changing expressions − in committing to recovery, in reclaiming their calling by changing their practice setting mid-career, in seeking counseling, and sometimes by either saving or stepping away from a failing marriage. Willingness to change is an essential part of any life, but not an easy one. Theologian and ethicist Reinhold Niebuhr once noted, “Change is the essence of life; be willing to surrender what you are for what you could become.”

Real change starts with a careful assessment of what is not right with our life. The path toward change requires careful discernment in the context of our values, our relationships, what makes us feel content, and how a problem tangibly affects our day-to-day life. From this can emerge a carefully considered plan for a long-term change of course rather than a quick fix. Successful, real change is usually measured in months or years, through a series of innumerable small steps (and missteps).

When fully achieved, real change is a seismic movement of the soul, a visible expression of our values − what lies within our heart. With a sincere desire for change, as Sharon Salzberg notes “…. the engagement that results can be an openhearted demonstration of what we care about most deeply. Efforts toward change are an expression of our own innate dignity and testaments of the belief that what we do matters in this world. We engage not only to try to foster change right now − we engage to enliven what we believe to someday be possible.” In what Mary Oliver calls our “one wild and precious life,” we have been given many gifts, among them our sense of purpose, connection with others, grace, and an innate capacity for change − again and again − as we travel through this life in this world.

Brian Sayers, MD
Chair, TCMS Physician Wellness Program
Contact Dr. Sayers at briansayers24@gmail.com