Medical Student Burnout

[liveonearth]

and misery.... good article about it:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/31/health/chen10-30.html?_r=3&emc=eta1

Comments

[bodylove.livejournal.com]

thanks for the link....although i'm not in med school, I've worked in social services with ill people for years and I'm experiencing burn out like never before....feeling so low and like I've lost compassion, and questioning the path I always thought I wanted to be on. although I still feel I'm heading in the right direction, I know I need to take better care of myself or I won't be able to help anyone

[liveonearth.livejournal.com]

Sorry to hear the fatigue is catching up with you.

I just read the beginning of A Path with Heart where Jack Kornfield is telling a story about when he worked in a prison. He thought he would teach the prisoners to meditate, because that's what he did as a psychiatrist and a Buddhist, but he decided that it was the caregivers who much more needed that tool. To keep the heart of compassion open...

I'm so glad that you're on the path toward taking care of yourself. I'm learning it late in life myself.

[hausfrauatu.livejournal.com]

Residency is absolute hell. It's what makes M.D.s feel entitled to make a brazillion dollars a year. No one is happy working 80 to 120 hours per week. Duhhhh!

They work such long hours I don't want one touching me EVER. My good friend's husband is a newly minted trauma surgeon. Yeah. They are supposed to LOOOOOVE it. It's considered pointless and unprofessional to admit to how beat down and exhausted you are.

U of M's Residency had a 110% divorce rate among married residents. Go Blue! Yes. Some got divorced remarried and divorced again. How did they find the time?

[liveonearth.livejournal.com]

110% divorce rate! Wow. That's truly outstanding. I guess what I'm going through it relatively easy...but it does seem somehow pointless to punish us as much as they do.

Oh, the other reason docs gotta charge is to pay off that whopping loan. I am going to have to charge more than I want to when I graduate. I'm doing deep breathing about all of that.