For this Ontario family doctor, work-life balance means making room for big aspirations
Some dreams have a way of staying with us, even as life and career move forward.
For Dr. Elizabeth ‘Liz’ Liao, a family physician and obstetrician from Waterdown, Ont., that's The Amazing Race. Since she was a little girl, Dr. Liao and her twin sister, Tina, had dreamed of competing on the CTV reality competition show.
They applied for the first season of the Canadian launch and for multiple seasons after that.
Then one day, they got the call.
“We were just over the moon” about being chosen to compete on Season 12 of the show, she says. It premiered on July 7.
Watch Dr. Liao and her sister, Tina, introduce themselves and catch them on Season 12 of The Amazing Race Canada Tuesdays at 9 p.m. ET on CTV.
“My sister and I said that if we ever had the chance to do The Amazing Race, we would really do anything we could to make it happen,” Dr. Liao says.
For a busy practitioner who needs to keep a reality TV show spoiler-free, that can get complicated.
While filming in the spring, her colleagues were very supportive. They offered to cover or switch around hospital shifts without knowing the reason why, since she couldn’t say much about filming. Dr. Liao also secured a last-minute locum for her practice.
She says the experience has shown her that making space for personal goals, with the support of colleagues and community, is an important part of a healthy and sustainable medical career.
“Sometimes it can be really hard to prioritize yourself and your own well-being,” she says. “But if you take the time to focus on yourself outside of your career it's so rewarding, and I actually do think it makes you a better physician.”
“I love being a doctor, but I love having other interests too.”
Dr. Liao says filming took several weeks, with the first episodes beginning in B.C. before moving on to Alberta.
The hectic pace of the race frequently mirrored that of medicine and reinforced the importance of resilience, self-compassion, teamwork and trusted support.
One particularly difficult leg left her and her sister, who is a lawyer, disappointed in themselves and their performance. But her sister helped her through it, reframing the experience as a mistake they wouldn’t make again.
“The race is a lot like life. You’re being thrown these new experiences that you’ve never done before and you’re making mistakes, but you’re learning from them,” she says. Her mentality around competing on the show was “if I can do 24 hours on-call, I can do this.”
For Dr. Liao, The Amazing Race Canada is another part of fulfilling the work-life balance she values. She spends four days a week at her family practice of about 1,300 patients in Waterdown, while also doing obstetrics and newborn care at Joseph Grant Hospital in Burlington and Brampton Civic Hospital in Brampton.
Outside of work, she spends time with her family and pursues hobbies like figure skating, crediting her parents’ mindset around prioritizing both academics as well as creative hobbies when she and her sister were growing up.
“I love being a doctor, but I love having other interests too,” she says.
Her advice for physicians who have their own dreams they’re thinking of pursuing?
“Just go for it, commit to yourself. You won't regret it and maybe you'll get to do something really cool."