Burnout

In viewing trauma through a wider lens we see its detrimental impact.

Avoiding implicit bias starts with a conscious knowledge it exists within you.

Burn-out is a syndrome conceptualized as resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed.

People in developing countries often contend with a range of ongoing stressors from active conflict, post-conflict transition, fragile governance structures, and economic uncertainty to name a few.

Already struggling in a system-wide burnout crisis, COVID-19 responders in healthcare now have reason to worry.

Clinicians and other healthcare workers, as well as trainees and students, face diverse, cumulative, and synergistic toxic exposures that can lead to distress.

Though burnout and trauma exposure have different causes and symptoms – and require different interventions and remedies – it’s well established that both are highly toxic to the wellbeing, resilience, and health of employees.

Trauma. We encounter it just about everywhere we look these days. We absorb it through news stories of victims and from witnesses of violent plots, shootings, and cruelty. We feel it through natural disasters, poverty, and homelessness. You don’t have to be someone’s mother to ache with empathy and compassion for those suffering from such horrific experiences.

Although it’s been two weeks since the anniversary and remembrances of 9/11, I find myself still reflecting on how it changed the lives of so many, including my own. The horrors of that day occurred only two months after I started my residency at Mount Sinai Hospital in NYC.

In our first blog in the Connectedness Series, we discussed the benefits and drawbacks that the advancement of technology has on connectedness in the workplace especially as it impacts the healthcare arena. However, technology is impacting connectedness in many workplaces, which makes us ask, “What is unique about physicians?”