So why is this important?Because for most of us, the doing is what takes up 99.99% of our lives. We’re all about the doing. We are constantly trying to keep things under control, or keeping ourselves busy to distract ourselves from thoughts or feelings that we are trying to avoid. The problem here is that most of what happens to us is outside of our control. And despite my best efforts of distraction, the harder I try to avoid thoughts and feelings I don’t want, the more intrusive they tend to be. The doing is actually what causes most of my stress, worry and anxiety. How about you? So how about the being?The being of life is that feeling we have when we are totally immersed in something, perhaps it’s playing with our kids, or playing a sport or doing something else we love. That state of ‘being in the zone’, where all we are aware of is exactly the task we have at hand. In that being state, our minds tend to let go of all those worries we carry. The worries of the things we need to do, or mistakes we’ve made in the past or even things that haven’t happened yet, they all seem to fall to the wayside in favour of the awareness of being present. Right in that moment, present for what is happening to us right then. No more, no less. The skills we learn through practicing mindfulness are about grounding ourselves in the present. Allowing the natural human preoccupation with doing to simply wash over us, each moment a chance to “begin again”. Our meditations simply a practicing ground for this ability to find our way back to the present again and again, no matter how many times our mind wanders. We use anchors like our breath, or the sounds we can hear around us, or our bodily sensations to help to guide us back. And as we leave our cushion each time we finish our meditation, we take this awareness with us through out our day. This knowledge that no matter what happens to us, no matter how much our mind wanders, or how far ‘off course’ we feel, we can always find our way back to those anchors we place and strengthen each time we meditate. Our sense of awareness grows. We become less a human doing and more a human being. For in this state of being, we know that we can always come back to the present moment. With grace and humility, again and again. That is equanimity. That is self compassion. 
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I had an amazing conversation with a wonderful friend tonight. The conversation was about life, mental health and the all round messiness that often surrounds both those things. She said "I wish people talked about this more". I couldn't help but agree. For a long time I didn't talk about it openly. I certainly helped my patients with their mental health and I think I was good at it. But I honestly didn't see my own impending burnout. I couldn't see the looming storm clouds heralded by 3am wake ups and unfulfilling sleepless nights, by constant worry about making a mistake, by bone aching empathy fatigue. I couldn't see it, because I was so blinded by my compulsion to help others. A noble compulsion for sure, but a blinding one none the less. I also couldn't see it, because so many of my friends and colleagues were exactly the same as I was. There are obviously individual factors at play here as most of my colleagues haven't (officially) burnt out despite my observation that so many of them were and still are feeling similarly. Is that a marker of resilience? Perhaps. Or is it a marker that my path was just going to be a different one? That the barrier between me and change was thinner? My yoga teacher training introduced me to the concept of ahimsa, of doing no harm to other living beings. But here I was unwittingly harming myself everyday by my inability to place caring for myself high enough on my own agenda to protect my own mental health. So when it all came crashing down, I crumbled into a series of debilitating panic attacks. The first one lasting almost 48 hours. An entire weekend of sheer internal panic that left my aching body depleted and empty. I thought to myself in that moment "OK, I'll take a week off work". One week off work, booked in 2 weeks ahead of that date because I was already booked up with patients for those two weeks. Looking back now I can't believe that I was still unable to see the storm that was now gathering ominously overhead. I still didn't know I was burnt out. I just thought I was stressed. That I needed a holiday. The second panic attack put an end to my plans to see out the two weeks of patients that were booked in. I was dressed and ready for work, the kids all ready for school. I went to walk out the front door of my house, when all of a sudden I was gripped with completely unmitigated fear. The vice around my chest and throat told me that this wasn't going to be like that first panic attack that I could quietly implode inward with. This one literally brought me to my knees. My 3 and 5 year old children worriedly watching on while I burst into panicked tears at simply the thought of being outside my house. The thought of leaving it's safety, even though I had rapidly come to realise that even my home didn't provide me sanctuary from my thoughts. The rising heat in my chest, the crushing feelings of suffocation. I had this unrelenting sense that I needed to run away, yet no where to run and an acute awareness that this feeling would follow me wherever I went. To remember that feeling now still brings tears to my eyes.
The upshot of burning out is that I'm not afraid to talk about these things now. There is something very reassuring about knowing where the bottom is because I know I won't ever let myself get there again. So I gave in. What choice did I have? I was no longer functional and certainly not able to work. I saw my GP, spoke to my psychologist. I rested. A lot. I wrote. My thoughts and feelings cascading out of me faster than I could get them onto paper. Notes popping up everywhere, like emotional mushrooms, sprouting from the fertile ground of my distress. I even reflected here on the huge wide expanse that now seemingly lay in front of me. I didn't really go into the true details of my immense distress at that stage, fearful of the potential for repercussions it might hold for me. The mask obviously slipping, but not yet completely off. Eventually, some months into my surprise sabbatical, I began to sleep through the night for the first time in many years. Sleep now became my yard stick of wellbeing. Whenever I again noticed my 3am wakefulness, I knew there was something wrong, something that I must change. I spent 6 glorious months immersing myself in my kids. Grateful everyday that I was still able to love and enjoy every minute of motherhood. Burnout for me was the 'doctor' light globe going out, but the rest of the fuse box relatively unharmed. Since that time, I've been re-building myself. I've been immensely fortunate to have a supportive family, colleagues and friends in this time. I have talked very openly about my struggles. Burning out and even more than that, my process of active decision making as to the path I take forward since then has formed such an integral part of the person I have become that I do feel grateful in a sense that it happened to me. I now know where my 'peak operating point' is. Perhaps it's lower than other peoples? That's OK. Because ultimately, I know what happens when I go beyond it. The path back from burn out is no easier than the path there. Both fraught with uncertainty and fear. But one is more active. The dark clouds begin to gather overhead again and you ease back the throttle, mindful that it was lack of self awareness that contributed to me arriving there in the first place. The compassionate voice in my head now reminding me to slow down, to notice the physical warning signs of stress and allow them to complete their journey through my body rather than carrying them with me, unheeded, forever held and accumulated. I am more mindful. Content. We are all on a different path in life. My goal is no longer to 'keep up'. The 'doorway of change' that I sensed when I burnt out is now wide open, with the expanse that lies in front of me both exhilarating and unnerving. My hope now is that I can continue to speak my truth and to walk beside others who find themselves on this path to burn out and back again. Emily
Why are doctors burning out and what can we do about it? First and foremost I need to preface this with the fact that the reasons that anyone burns out are nuanced and personal. But there are also some widely accepted (source) general precipitants to occupational burn out such as:
Now let’s look at these specifically in relation to both hospital and community medicine. 1. Dysfunctional workplace dynamics At last count there were 101 841 doctors in Australia, of those just over 95% work mainly in clinical medicine (source). Clinical medicine consists of a variety of inpatient, outpatient, hospital and community settings. Clinical medicine is the interface between doctor and patient. The one thing that these doctors have in common is that within all of these clinical settings, they are largely beholden to the assorted guidelines, procedures and pathways that each health service implements. In a resource limited system like the Australian public health system, these guidelines and policies ensure as fair and as equitable access to finite beds and care as is humanly possible. As doctors, our heart often breaks having to watch our patients suffer from extended wait times or difficulties accessing care. Us not being able to change it, doesn’t mean we don’t care. Any of us who have worked in clinical medicine (whether doctor, nurse, allied health or even patient administration) know how heartbreaking it is to not be able to do any more than we are doing. This constant stretching of resources and people to their limits can inevitably lead to fractures or animosity between colleagues or patients. We’re all doing our best, but sometimes it can feel like bailing water out of the Titanic. 2. A lack of job control Of the over 100 000 registered doctors in Australia, 16 500 of these doctors are in a specialty training program (source). These training programs range in duration from 3-7+ years depending on speciality. While on these training programs, Registrars (as these trainee specialist doctors are known) are required to move across a wide variety of placements, ranging from within a specified state area to all over Australia and in the case of post graduate Fellowship training, sometimes the world, in order to meet their training requirements. Quite simply, they will go where ever their speciality college says they must go. For many of our specialists-in-training, things like starting a family are put on hold due in large part to the transient and demanding nature of these training programs. And while the rigour of the Australian speciality colleges is to be commended, it must also be appreciated that as more of our doctors come through graduate entry medical programs, many more of our specialists-in-training will desire to be starting a family during their training programs. Our speciality colleges must move with these changes and adapt to afford our trainees a greater degree of autonomy in their training pathways. Gaining fellowship of your chosen college does change this point enormously, however it is important not to negate the distress caused by this point on the lives of trainees. 3. Lack of social support From the above point, you can appreciate that during this time of frequent moving and renewing of contracts, it is often difficult to put down roots. From having social supports, to gym memberships, to knowing where the best take away food is- moving every few months makes it very difficult to build a network of support around our specialists-in-training. 4. Unclear job expectations I have learnt the hard way that this point does become easier with time. Statistics show that older doctors are less prone to burn out (source). Some postulate that this is because more experienced doctors are better able to appreciate what is within our control in medicine and what is outside of it. That the wisdom of years allows us to separate the ‘wheat from the chaff’ better and learn how to focus our energy more productively on that which we can control or change. I would offer a secondary thought to this concept though and add that this is also partly due to the fact that medicine is such a hugely dynamic field. Things that I learnt at medical school are now completely redundant, medications are superseded at an alarming rate and there are diseases that I was taught were life long and incurable during my medical training that we can not only now manage but even cure. The sheer level of information needed to be kept up to date with in clinical medicine is astonishing. Couple this with the ever changing digital health landscape, keeping up with the advances of modern medicine is a tough task. Google X’s Astro Teller is quoted as saying to author Thomas Friedman that the rate of human adaptability is being superseded by technology and that we must “learn(ing) faster and govern(ing) smarter” in an attempt to catch up and keep up (source). Medicine is the perfect example of this.  5. Extremes of activity It will come as no surprise to anyone that the working life of a doctor involves long and often unpredictable working hours. The allure of General Practice is often quoted as being “family friendly” or “better work hours” than other speciality training pathways and post fellowship lives. But the reality of private practice is that medicine involves many, many hours of work outside our ‘work hours’ regardless of what speciality you choose because often it is simply not practical (not possible) to ‘hand over a patient’ to someone else. In the hospitals, this shouldn’t be occurring however. The ability to hand over a patient and leave a shift on time in a hospital that is staffed 24hrs a day 7 days a week is something that we must protect for the juniors that come after us. Unfortunately, this seems to not be a sentiment shared by many medical administration departments as shown by a current class action admirably launched by a collective of junior doctors fighting to be paid their fair overtime (source). This is something that as doctors we must all call out and enforce in order to protect our junior workforce from burn out when it is obvious from the previous and above points, that our trainees are shouldering the lions share of these known ‘burn out precipitant factors’ (most notable of which is the lack of job control and limited social support). 6. Work life imbalance For most doctors, we have taken a path of 10-15 years of education post high school. For those years, education, work and other aligned commitments have been front and centre in our lives. We’ve literally conditioned ourselves to place work above all else. Medicine is often spoken of as ‘not just a career but a calling’. As noble as this sounds, doctors are people just like the rest of us. There was not course at medical school that took the fleshy vulnerability of humanity away from us. We too need to strike a balance between taking care of others and taking care of ourselves. These two things however are not the dichotomy that they may initially appear to be. One of the fundamental concepts around my model of Basic Life Support Self Care™ is that in the same way we first check for danger in our clinical BLS algorithm, we must take care of ourselves in order to take the best care of our patients. Learning how to integrate authentic and holistic self care practices into our lives as clinicians is not self indulgent but is in fact paramount to being a good doctor. Clearly there are huge systemic issues that contribute towards physician burnout. No doubt there are also individual factors at play, after all, despite the fact that I burned out, not everyone one of my colleagues will. I’m not offering an ‘either/or’ solution here. What I am suggesting is that there are a variety of things that each of us can do to mitigate feelings of burnout for ourselves as well as systemic issues and structures that as a collective we can begin to shine a light on. Most importantly however, I want to say to others in my profession who are feeling burnt out or overwhelmed that I see you. I know what that feels like and that is exactly the reason that I started The Healers Health Collective. That right now I am just one person, but that my hope and dream is that this resource will grow and flourish and that one day I will be able to “be the change that I wish to see in the world” (Gandhi). 
Yet, I was still a square peg. |
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