Welcome to Life After Call

Most of the conversation I hear in medicine about AI right now is about clinical AI. Ambient scribes, decision support, imaging, charting copilots. That’s a serious conversation and the people having it should keep having it.

But I kept noticing a gap that nobody was talking about.

In the call room, at partner meetings, at the coffee cart, I’d watch people I respect, smart, busy, type-A physicians, quietly struggle with the kind of stuff AI has been pretty good at for two years now. A school project they forgot about. A property statement they hadn’t opened. A trip they meant to plan in March that was now April. Drafting a difficult email to a contractor or a board. The boring tasks of being a person, which the hospital never lightens for you and which nobody is going to pilot in an innovation lab because there’s no RFP for “help our doctors get their lives back.”

The wins from AI that you’d feel inside a week of trying are sitting right there, unclaimed, while the loudest conversation in medicine stays on the parts that need committees, validation, and a lawyer in the room.

I figured someone should write the other version of this conversation. So I am.

A little about me, and why I think I can help

I’m Alex, a practicing anesthesiologist. I’m not a developer and I didn’t come into this with a CS background. What I had was time on my hands during a stretch of nights and weekends, a strong dislike of feeling behind on something, and the willingness to keep going when things didn’t work the first time. That last part turned out to be the whole game.

Over the last couple of years I’ve used AI for a long, weird list of things. The most obvious ones, in case you’re wondering whether this site is going to be useful to you:

I’ve vibe-coded apps and sites, this one included. Which is a way of saying I describe what I want, the model writes the code, I read it, push back when something looks wrong, and at the end I have something that works. I don’t read every line. I read enough.

I’ve run social media and a small marketing program, posts, captions, image work, a calendar I can keep up with on a normal week. None of which I would have had time to do five years ago.

I’ve planned family trips, the kind with itineraries that actually account for jet lag and a six year old’s tolerance for museums. Restaurant shortlists with the reasoning behind each pick. Packing lists that aren’t generic.

I’ve spent real time using AI to understand my own money. Not picking stocks, not investment advice, none of that. The unglamorous work of organizing statements, asking plain-English questions about my own cash flow, and learning what I actually own and owe.

And I’ve built operational systems for my rental properties, the kind of stuff that used to live in a notebook and a guilty pile of mail. Tracking, summaries, draft communications, expense categorization, lease comparisons that I can read in five minutes.

None of that required a course or a custom setup. It required iteration, and a willingness to ask better questions when the first answer was bad.

What this site is

Life After Call is one practicing physician (me) writing for other practicing physicians, about how to use AI for the part of life that happens outside the hospital.

I organize what I publish into five rough pillars. They’re not airtight. They’re how I think about what I want to write.

• The Efficient Home. Meal planning, household logistics, the chores you keep putting off.
• Career and Wealth, non-clinical. Real estate management, financial systems, side ventures. The parts of physician money nobody covered in residency.
• Parenting and Family. School schedules, kids’ projects, birthday parties on a post-call day.
• Elevated Leisure. Travel planning, hobbies, what off time is supposed to be for.
• AI Technical Insight. Agents, prompts, and workflows explained for physicians who do not have time to learn another tool.

If a topic doesn’t fit any of those, I probably won’t write about it.

What this site is not

I don’t write about clinical work. No patient care, no charting, no clinical decision support, no scribes, nothing that touches the inside of the hospital.

It’s a hard rule for two reasons. The first is professional. Clinical AI has its own regulators, validation requirements, and malpractice considerations, and it deserves to be discussed by the people working through those things properly. That’s not me on this site. The second reason is focus. The hospital already takes a lot from you. Most physicians I know are good at clinical work and quietly underwater in the rest of their lives. This site is the rest of your life. The part that’s been short-changed.

Nothing on the site is medical advice. I will pivot, every single time, if a post starts drifting toward clinical content. If it ever doesn’t, that’s a writing error and you should ignore it.

What you can expect from me

The wins, but also the failures. The failures are usually more useful. I’ve burned a Saturday on workflows that turned out to be a waste and tools that sounded great in a launch post and turned out to be mediocre once a real human tried them in a real week. I’d rather write that up than pretend everything was a victory.

What I’m using now, not what I might use. The prompts I ran this week. The tools I opened most. The output I got.

When I show a workflow, you’ll see the prompt and the result, not just the recommendation.

No affiliate hustle. If I mention a tool it’s because I use it. If that ever changes I’ll say so on the post and in the header.

And the part I care about most, this should be a conversation. The best posts here will come from real questions from other physicians, not from whatever I happened to think about this week.

The tools I’m actually opening

There’s no best AI. There’s the one that fits your habit. I rotate through four most weeks.

Claude is where I do longer writing, document work, and most of my coding. The voice is the most natural of the bunch and the long-context handling is the best I’ve found for reading a stack of articles or a long PDF.

ChatGPT is my quick-answer and brainstorming tab, and what I open when my kid needs a poster about the water cycle at 9pm.

Gemini lives inside Google’s apps for me. Drafting a Gmail reply, summarizing a long thread, asking a question about a Doc I’m in the middle of, pulling something out of a Sheet. The in-place help is the value.

NotebookLM is the one I’d recommend to a colleague first. Drop in a stack of PDFs, articles, transcripts, or your own notes, and ask questions. It cites the source. It’s how I learn a new topic without reading every page.

You don’t need all four. Most physicians I know do well with one or two. I’ll write a deeper post on each over the next few weeks, with examples.

A short note on the name

The name is on purpose. Anyone who’s been on a call-heavy schedule, anesthesia, surgery, EM, OB, hospital medicine, knows what “after call” feels like. It’s the day you swore you’d use to catch up on everything, and instead you slept until 1pm and ate cereal for dinner.

I’m not trying to fix that day. That day is sacred and you’ve earned it.

I’m trying to fix the system around that day, so when you wake up at 1pm your life isn’t quietly falling apart in the background.

Let’s make this a conversation

This is the part I care about most.

I’m not trying to broadcast. I want a back and forth with other physicians who are curious, a little behind, a little skeptical, or already in the weeds and want to compare notes. Wins. Failures. Weird prompts that worked. Tools that didn’t. The question you’ve been quietly Googling at 11pm.

Send them. The best posts here are going to come from you.

How to follow along

Pick whichever one of these you already check. Don’t add a new habit.

LinkedIn is primary. That’s where I post the short form pieces, quick tips, educational notes, and links to every new long-form blog post. Follow on LinkedIn.

Facebook mirrors the same content for people whose feed lives there. Follow on Facebook.

Instagram is the visual version, quick takes and graphics and the bite-sized cuts from each post. Follow on Instagram.

If you live in an RSS reader, grab the feed.

If you have a question you’d like me to take on, or a workflow you’ve been trying to nail down, email is on the Connect page. I read everything.

Thanks for being here on day one.

Alex, MD

Practicing anesthesiologist · Founder of Life After Call

Strictly non-clinical. Nothing on this site is medical advice. I do not post about patient care.