How Does An Intern Become Burnt-Out In Residency?

The transition from medical school to residency is abrupt, yet exciting. We begin the year so eager and enthusiastic. The rush of adrenaline as you place your first order… the validation you feel as the attending physicians agree with your plan… the first time you make the correct diagnosis in the ever-elusive morning report cases… all of it is new and challenging.  The patients refer to you as doctor and ask you questions about their care. The nurses ask if you can evaluate a sick patient because they want your opinion. You spend hours after sign-out making sure your notes are perfect, which your academic mind considers a daily writing assignment that you MUST ace every time. You try your best to read that article on UpToDate before you fall asleep. You are the first one to get to the hospital, and last to leave.

You have been given trust and responsibilities. You want to meet these expectations.

The first few months pass and you find a rhythm. The feelings of excitement fade and you begin to feel efficient. You start to recognize what you need to do to keep your attending physicians and the upper levels happy.  You are finishing your work faster than before.

You start to feel more comfortable, but little day to day things happen that change you without you even realizing it. A patient passing away, a picture of your family together for dinner without you, a burnt-out consultant yelling at you over an improper consult. When these things occur, you ignore them and try to move forward. You feel as though you have easily brushed them away, but in reality, they affect you.

January and February become the hardest months of the year. Burnout can present in many different ways. It can present itself subtly like having difficulty getting up in the morning to go to work. You may think to yourself, “this is normal, tons of people have a difficult time getting up in the morning.” Yet, it is like a stepping stone. Your lack of sleep turns into you finding nursing calls annoying. All of the time spent on documentation, hours spent in front of computers taking away from patient care begin to change how you view your work. The combination of working twelve hours a day and trying to learn more about the pathology you see becomes difficult. You may even find your work uninteresting. And yet, with all of that said, even though you are fully aware of burnout and have heard the term multiple times, you believe that what you are experiencing is normal.

The first step to tackling burnout is to recognize it. Self-reflection is an important aspect of residency, but at times, it is your friends and family that point out the subtleties of burn out. Once you have recognized it, then it is easier to track and find what exactly is causing you to feel stressed.

Have you experienced burnout? If so, how has your experience of burnout affected you?

 

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