Woman explains why she ditched career as brain surgeon to stack shelves at warehouse

Monday, September 16, 2024 - An assistant brain surgeon making six figures a year has opened up about why she left the operating theatre to work in an Amazon warehouse.

Helen Xu, 31, from Brisbane's south, started working as an assistant surgeon at a hospital in Queensland in 2018.

However, when Covid hit in 2020, Ms Xu was working tirelessly almost every day, with shifts lasting as long as 30 hours.

As she didn't have children or elderly relatives at home to risk spreading the disease to, Ms Xu said she was one of the staff relied upon heavily to pick up extra shifts.

Exhausted and unable to spend any quality time with friends and family, Ms Xu eventually left her career in medicine in September 2021.

She then decided to work for Amazon, stacking shelves.

"For the last couple of months working in the hospital I just wasn't sure when I'd get enough rest," she told Daily Mail Australia.

She said that during Covid, exceptional circumstances at her hospital meant that she was on call every day.

"There was a lot of pressure on those who didn't have kids or elderly people at home to come in," she said.

"I also didn't want to take any potential contact I'd had with sick people to my friends and family so I didn't have much of a social life."

Ms Xu said work was so demanding that she was called in nearly every day, with sometimes just half a day off as rest between back-to-back shifts.

After starting her role as an Amazon casual warehouse associate, the 31-year-old found herself preparing customers' orders, loading boxes onto trucks and stacking shelves.

Even though she earned more as a surgeon, Ms Xu prefers her current job because of the time it gives her.

She said: "I guess when you look at medicine, the pay is on the higher end and definitely there's going to be pay discrepancies between now and then but in terms of how much time I (now) have for myself, it works out."

She added that her job stacking shelves is worlds apart from the high-pressure environment she experienced at the hospital.

As for her time as a surgical assistant, Ms Xu said she doesn't have any plans to return to the hospital any time soon.