A New Burnout for the New Year
2024; Lippincott Williams & Wilkins; Volume: 46; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1097/01.eem.0001005024.81770.7e
ISSN1552-3624
Autores Tópico(s)Health, psychology, and well-being
ResumoFigure: burnout, COVID, New Year, EPs, EM, medicine, ABEM, wellnessFigureDespite fireworks, midnight kisses, black-eyed peas, and billions of people tuning into the Times Square ball drop, Jan. 1 is not unlike Dec. 31. We wake up in our same beds, find our same slippers, and fill our same coffee mugs. What distinguishes January is our perspective. It's the time of year for self-awareness and self-imposed change as we reflect on the year we've been through and prepare for the year ahead. The year 2023 was a doozy. We experienced the loss of two of my oldest son's best friends in a car crash just weeks before their high school graduation. Months later, I dropped one son off at college and helped the other son apply to go off to college this fall. Then we finished building and moving into our new home, an empty nester's oasis in the country. Looking back at 2023's dramatic events and milestones, I realize the year dialed up my burnout meter. Since well before COVID, I've been among the ever-growing ranks of burned-out EPs. Now I'm missing my son, and I have two friends who will never see their sons again. I see that the time we have with our kids is precious, and I find myself resenting EM for all the lost holidays, birthdays, and school events. I'm wondering, in retrospect, if all the sacrifices I've made for this career were worth it. I dutifully worked late after shifts, when colleagues needed to be at a funeral or with a sick loved one, and when my own kids were sick. Then this past April when my son's friends died, I reached out to my group asking for anyone to work my 12-hour overnight shift before the friends' celebration of life. The response? Crickets chirping. As one colleague put it, “We're all overworked and overextended already.” EPs no longer have the ability to step up and help their colleagues with personal difficulties because after dealing with the ever-increasing demands of the job, we often can barely handle our own. No Passion For 18 years—since some newly minted EPs were in middle school—I've missed moments with my kids on nights and weekends. None of that is rewarded in today's culture of EM where we're all just interchangeable names on a schedule. Expecting medicine to love me back was a mistake. After this past year, my zeal for medicine is at its nadir. When I sat down to write this article, it was the first time I felt no passion for any potential topic. There is nothing EM-related that I haven't already said, won't get me in trouble, or about which I care enough to write 1000 words. I want to write about my weekend visiting my oldest son at college, the view out the window at my new desk, or my youngest's last football season. The last thing I want to write about is medicine. It's telling that as I decorate my new office, none of the items I want to display are medical. I stuffed my Yale Med diploma and ABEM certification in a drawer; I placed remembrances of loved ones, trips, and my corgis front and center. One look at my office shelves makes clear that the moments in my life that have mattered most did not happen at work. I used to want to fight against physician moral injury. I've spent the better part of a decade decrying the dehumanizing business of health care—writing, advocating, and speaking out. Nothing changes except my own level of frustration. Now I'm tired. Fighting for wellness feels like an oxymoron. An Unyielding System An EP fighting the health care system is like a bug throwing itself against a windshield. The system will smash the life out of us, wipe us away with the flick of a wiper blade, and keep barreling ahead. Last year reminded me that there is too much life outside of work to let work bash the life out of me. Rather than getting worked up about things I can't control, I see myself starting to feel as indifferent toward the health care system as it feels toward us EPs. It's not my nature to be apathetic about anything, and I am no less disillusioned with the health care system. We have to dampen our fire or risk burning out completely at some point. Apathy is a self-protective response to prevent myself from continuing to smash myself against an unyielding system. Like the pathologies we diagnose, burnout can have many different presentations. It can make us shout through a megaphone from the rooftops to rage against physician exploitation or make us detached and apathetic. My type of burnout going into 2024 is the latter. I don't want to fight the health care system monster anymore. My precious time and energy are better invested in my wellness outside of work. I will prioritize loving my family, my friends, and most importantly, myself in 2024. ‘Tis the season for out with the old, in with the new, but I say, out with fighting for wellness, in with loving for wellness. DR. SIMONS is a full-time night emergency physician in Richmond, VA, and a mother of two. Follow her on X @ERGoddessMD, and read her past columns at http://bit.ly/EMN-ERGoddess. Share this article on X and Facebook. Access the links in EMN by reading this on our website: www.EM-News.com. Comments? Write to us at [email protected].
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