A Doctor´s Career Path

Text: Eva Tlašková, Ostrava
Photographs: Pavel Štěrba, Brandýs nad Labem

“The only thing I am addicted to is success in life,” says Lubomír Šmuk, MD, one of the leading specialists working for the MEDICOM VIP medical centre that offers tumescent liposuction and body contouring. “If someone is willing to offer me double my salary I take it as evidence of how indispensable I am.”

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The desire to be successful in life has brought him far. From
childhood dreams of flying planes, becoming a veterinarian or taking care of elephants in a zoo, he finally ended up studying medicine, specialising in anaesthesia. As he says, “the anaesthetist can see everyone’s cards but only a few can see his.”

After he finished his studies, he stayed in his home town of Ostrava for seven years, working as an anaesthetist. Because doctors’ working conditions and salaries in communist Czechoslovakia did not correspond to his expectations, he started to consider working abroad. First he wanted to go to Arab countries, like Kuwait or Libya, but this plan failed due to lack of finances for bribes and because he was not able to get the special recommendations needed for these countries.

After the borders opened in 1989, he immediately left for Austria where anaesthetists were much in demand. Because he was a foreigner, in order to keep his position, he always had to be among the best. Within two and a half years he became head of the ward and stayed in the post for ten years.

Even though he had reached such a high position and his salary ten years ago was four times what he earns now, he does not remember the time in Austria with pleasure. “It is as if someone cuts twelve long years out of your life. I spent that part of my life practically only in the hospital. I worked days and nights. Once I tried to count it and realised that I had spent eleven and half hours a day on my feet working, four and half hours driving, half an hour eating lunch and only six hours sleeping.”

At first, life in Austria felt exciting but as time went by he started feeling homesick for Ostrava: he lacked social contacts, leisure time and worked hard all of the time. During his time in Austria, he found a girlfriend in the Czech Republic whom he married but also divorced shortly thereafter. The marriage lasted for only two months, mostly because Lubomír placed his career higher than his personal life. His wife did not want to live in Austria and she did not succeed in making him return to Moravia, because he simply did not want to go back.

After he returned from Austria he hoped that the health care system in Czech Republic would have improved but he did not find it much changed. A specialist with experience from abroad was not wanted anywhere.

“The time after I got back from Austria was the most wasted time of my life. I was just idling, starting to drink, until I realised that my bank account was not bottomless. Until then, I had spent most of my life in the hospital; I got my clothes and my food there. I went nowhere, did not buy anything. I did not even know the real value of money.” However, he managed to get back on his feet and this fact gave him the strength and motivation to keep going.
In 2002, he started actively cooperating with the Beskydy Rehabilitation Centre in Čeladná on the project of cryotherapy known as “polarium”. “The medical treatment is based on low temperatures of -60 to -120 C. I was the one who came up with the name polarium because I did not like the English and German “Cryogenic chamber” – it reminded too much of “gas chamber”. The patients now speak about it only as going to polarium; it is a positive thing for them.” Polarium can help treat chronic pain of joints, the spine, and various postoperative symptoms.

In financial terms, the work for the rehabilitation centre was not what he had hoped for. “I regarded it as my hobby and fun but could not make a living from it,” Mr. Šmuk says in retrospect. After two years he started to look for other options. The opportunity for a better career came in February 2006 in Prague, in the field of plastic and aesthetic surgery. After only half a year he and a team of specialists managed to make a new private clinic one of the best aesthetic surgery centers in the Czech Republic.

The main reason for choosing to work in Prague was that in the Ostrava region the job chances were almost zero, at least in the financial range he prefers. To travel for work is not a burden for Mr. Šmuk, on the contrary. It is a certain kind of fun and pleasure for him. He feels cosmopolitan and likes this kind of lifestyle. Apart from the money, the possibility of further professional development is important for him.

He travels to work once a week, according to the number of patients. Usually he leaves Ostrava on Tuesday at four in the morning in order to be at the Clinic at eight when the first patients arrive. His work day ends around six p.m., often he does not leave till after nine. Work does not stop with office hours; he keeps working on his laptop during leisure time. If all goes well, he leaves Prague on Thursdays around six in the evening or on Friday mornings. Because of speed and comfort, he only travels by the Czech Republic’s most expensive train, the SC Pendolino, a high-speed train operating between Prague and Ostrava.

“My time is extremely expensive and apart from saving fifteen minutes by getting to the train earlier, I have not a single free minute during the day”, was the fist thing he said to us when we tried to convince him to participate in this study on labour migration. Even during the journey in Pendolino, our conversations were interrupted by his working on his computer. This way of travelling is much more pleasant and easier for him than travelling by car. He relaxes while watching the landscape from the train window, he finds the journey pleasant. He likes every kind of weather apart from fog. The only thing he dislikes about his trips to Prague is having to get up at four to make the train.

Both in Ostrava and Prague, he lives in apartments. “A family house is not and never was my dream. I like travelling and would not have enough time to take care of the house.” In Prague, he rents a modest, one-bedroom apartment, nevertheless located in the city’s most expensive district, on Kampa Island.

Prague is only a place where he works – he does not connect it with home and feels that he lacks the background he has in Ostrava. Because he wants a high standard of living, he had to overcome the dislike for getting up early and spending a part of the week in the busy setting of Prague. Only here was he offered a “salary he was willing to work for.”

His life in Prague centres on work-related duties and so he does not have time or the mood for any after work activities. Prague, according to him, does not offer a range of leisure activities that suit him. In Ostrava he likes skiing, inline skating or horseback riding. He spends a lot of time with his best friend, sharing a hobby of stock exchange dealings, which is another good source of income. The exception was the crash after 9/11 when he lost half of his savings.

He is aware that he looks much younger than fifty. “I think that people’s idea about who is old or what is old age is a bit wrong. Many young people lose the desire for life already in their thirties and then only survive by drinking, with their will too weak to change anything.”

An active lifestyle and longevity is not an exception in his family. His grandmother is turning 100 this year and his father, who is 75, is actively in business and has a girlfriend 25 year his junior. Because his father, with his successful business, is able to support himself financially, Mr. Šmuk does not have to take care of him and can spend his money – not having a wife or children at present – any way he chooses.

However, what binds him to Ostrava now is his young girlfriend, still a student. Mr. Šmuk dreams about having a family soon, with at least two kids. He plans that when he has a family he will stop commuting because he will want to have his family close to him all the time. If he is the one who is making the most money in the family, he will insist that the family will live with him in Prague. “I am too old to lose even one minute of family life”. Even though he feels Ostrava is the place where he has his background and feels at home, the material well-being of the family is more important to him and therefore would be reason enough to leave Ostrava for Prague.

Thanks to hard working conditions in Austria, Mr. Šmuk learned to appreciate the value of leisure-time and personal life. He exchanged the Austrian clinic for his work in Prague, which leaves him almost the same amount of time for private life. Had he stayed in Austria, he would earn seven times his present salary in the Czech Republic, but he says he does not care to work in the conditions he experienced. “I got a lot of job offers in Austria but I declined them all. I do not want to spend the rest of my life locked up in a hospital.”