As you know, I left medicine entirely about a year ago. I still have a couple of medical related businesses but that’s about it.
Without question, I have moved on. All of my physical and emotional energy are devoted to things outside of medicine.
Why? Well, I used to think it was a touch of attention deficit disorder. Sort of that—“been there done that” attitude.
The thing is, when I think back to when I started not enjoying medicine, it actually started in residency—as far back as my first year of surgical internship.
It’s sad because I was a HIGHLY motivated medical student. I was driven to succeed and my professors loved me (because I was a serious kiss-ass).
But then I started a neurosurgery residency and—well…I lost my mojo.
I experienced:
I heisted these three descriptions of a person with the clinical diagnosis of burnout from a psychology journal.
The physical and emotional exhaustion I figured was from the fact that I was working 100 hour weeks (before the 80 hour work week limit now enforced).
Cynicism and detachment—this is horrible. I was surrounded by death in the neurosurgical ICU. When a patient died, it was not sad. It was an inconvenience. I found the paperwork irritating and it was difficult to be truly compassionate to families. That’s the truth. I hate to say it, but that’s the person who I had become.
And, as for feeling of ineffectiveness and lack of accomplishment? Well, you just need a couple of unsupportive senior residents to make you feel like crap. Surgical training in most cases is quite hierarchical and I found many residents to be of the kiss up kick down variety.
Remarkably, I finished seven years of training despite my, almost immediate, distaste for the system.
But it was also that dissatisfaction that, in part, made it so easy for me to go another direction.
Did I have to go another direction? Was that the only way for me to feel better? I always thought so.
But if you look at “burn out” as a kind of disorder like depression or even a back problem (a literal pain in the ass), then maybe there is a way to not give it all up and start over.
Published on 7 years, 5 months ago
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