How to Recognize the Signs of Burnout

An Oxford language definition of “burnout” says: “the reduction of a fuel or substance to

nothing”….. Reduced to nothing was how I felt at the end of a work week, or even at the end of a workday. I would do what I could to restore a tiny bit of spark before the next morning, but I never could regain my losses completely, so I reduced further and further, little by little, eroding my Self away.

I looked everywhere outside of me for sustenance. My favorite restorative fuel became red wine with an occasional stray to single malt scotch, neat. I felt trapped in a health care environment that was controlling me and absconding with any independence I thought I should have as a healer.

I looked around at my partners who complained but seemed able to soldier through and not let the next bullshit corporate dictum regarding bedside patient care affect them. In reality, they were doing what they needed to do to survive: detach completely.

My commitment waned, and my selfishness escalated while my cynicism extended beyond corporate entities to patients themselves. That was when I knew it was time to quit. And I increasingly blamed myself for my failure to survive the insults of corporatized medicine.

We have used “burnout” in day-to-day conversation for so long and without question. We

throw it around seriously, as I did to articulate my reasons for leaving medicine behind, but we also use it casually when describing a week too full of work deadlines, kids’ extracurriculars, marital miscommunications. All the unease gets thrown in the simmering pot with a lid put on tight, and we label it “burnout.”

The problem with that word is the connotation of failure that lies within it. If someone professionally becomes “burned out”, the unspoken conversation usually is, Well, that’s what happens when you spread yourself too thin, or, She’s just slow in getting her charting done so a Scribe will solve the problem, or (a personal favorite), Don’t work harder, work smarter.

What if all of this perception around “burnout” is incorrect? False? Skewed? What if your own fatigue, distraction, resentment, and increased alcohol use is, in fact, your brain’s normal

response to feeling unsafe in your work environment? What if your body and your thoughts

are responding exactly as they should to a professional environment that threatens to harm

your professional ethic of healing and patient care. You are suffering, my friend, from what Dr. Wendy Dean has termed “personal moral injury.” You are having a series of normal, expected responses.

You are not alone. Not by a long shot. If you tossed a rock in your doctor’s lounge, it would

bounce off three people who are equally affected, and equally afraid, and equally angry, and

equally silently alone.

For today, please know, It’s Not You.

It is a broken system, and your ethical and moral compass has been stomped on and is spinning out of control in a cartoonish fashion, and that is a normal response to what is happening to you during your workday.

You’re not crazy, you’re not overreacting, and you’re not alone.

Jenie x