Authors: Bosinski et al.
The Daily Dose, IARS, Friday, May 8, 2026
Key Points
Academic anesthesiology careers often involve setbacks, rejected manuscripts, failed grants, unexpected opportunities, and major changes in direction.
The article highlights lessons from Max Kelz, Julie Freed, and Miles Berger on resilience, focus, mentorship, and career balance.
A major theme is that physicians and researchers may be able to do almost anything, but they cannot do everything at the same time.
Successful careers require choosing opportunities carefully, learning from failure, following unexpected scientific directions, and protecting personal relationships.
The article emphasizes that professional success should be built alongside personal meaning, family, mentorship, and love for the work.
Summary
This IARS Daily Dose article reviewed a Scholars’ Day session from the 2026 IARS and SOCCA Annual Meeting titled “The Resilience Playbook: Turning Adversity into Academic Momentum.” The session featured Max Kelz, MD, PhD, Julie Freed, MD, PhD, and Miles Berger, MD, PhD, who shared personal reflections on academic medicine, research careers, resilience, and the limits of professional capacity. The article’s central message is that talented physicians and scientists can accomplish a great deal, but they must also recognize that no one can do everything at once.
Dr. Kelz discussed how his career moved in unexpected directions. Initially interested in neurology and psychiatry, he shifted his focus after recognizing that studying consciousness and anesthetic states in animals offered a clearer research path. A memorable case involving a patient with narcolepsy who failed to emerge from anesthesia for more than 6 hours pushed him to ask deeper questions about anesthetic emergence. Although his early work challenged prevailing assumptions and was rejected by several journals, he persisted and ultimately contributed to the understanding that anesthetic emergence may be distinct from anesthetic induction.
The article uses Dr. Kelz’s story to show how setbacks can become turning points. Rather than abandoning a difficult question after rejection or unexpected results, he reframed the problem and continued pursuing it. His experience also highlights the importance of humility, curiosity, and support from family and professional colleagues. His relationship with his spouse, also a physician-scientist, is presented as an example of how personal support can help sustain a demanding academic career.
Dr. Freed focused on the challenge of overcommitment. She emphasized that while physicians may be capable of achieving many individual goals, trying to pursue every opportunity at the same time is not sustainable. She described how seemingly small opportunities, such as brief phone calls or new roles, can become meaningful career steps when they align with long-term goals. At the same time, she stressed the importance of recognizing limits, leaving prior roles when necessary, canceling meetings when appropriate, and making deliberate time for family.
Her perspective reframes time management as more than simply organizing a calendar. The article describes it as the ability to shift attention and effort among different roles, including physician, researcher, spouse, parent, mentor, and leader. Dr. Freed also emphasized the value of seeking advice from people both inside and outside medicine. Mentors near the end of their careers may offer especially valuable insight into what ultimately feels meaningful and worthwhile.
Dr. Berger shared a similar lesson about professional flexibility. Although he originally planned to study neurologic effects in a mouse model, his research shifted toward pancreatic islet cells. Later, clinical rotations helped him realize that he found meaning not only in long-term scientific discovery, but also in the immediate human impact of clinical practice. His career illustrates the value of being nimble, following the science, and remaining open to unexpected sources of fulfillment.
The article also described Dr. Berger’s analogy that academic medicine can feel like a pie-eating contest. At first, the work is exciting and rewarding, but over time, overcommitment can make even meaningful work feel burdensome. To avoid that, he encouraged maintaining broad interests, adopting a growth mindset, and continuing to learn new methods and fields. His own career expanded from CSF biomarkers to fMRI, omics, and machine learning.
A final theme was the importance of personal relationships. Dr. Berger emphasized that professional success does not replace the need to invest in family, friendships, and love. His reflections remind readers that a meaningful career is not only about publications, grants, and promotions, but also about the people who sustain and shape one’s life.
What You Should Know
This article is especially relevant for early-career anesthesiologists, academic physicians, researchers, and trainees who are trying to build successful careers without losing perspective. It makes clear that rejection, delay, changing direction, and difficult choices are normal parts of academic medicine.
The practical lesson is that resilience does not mean saying yes to everything. It means choosing carefully, learning from failure, seeking mentorship, adapting when the science changes, and preserving the personal relationships that make professional success meaningful.
Overall, the article argues that physicians can build rich and productive careers by doing a lot, but not everything. The goal is not endless productivity. The goal is thoughtful commitment to the work and people that matter most.
Thank you to IARS and The Daily Dose for allowing us to summarize and share this article.