Session 76 This week, we're joined by Allison who has previously shared her story of burnout. We discuss burnout as well as the birth of MedDiaries - our newest project to help with this. This episode is actually taken from The Premed Years Podcast since we're announcing this new project that will greatly impact premed students, medical students, residents, and physicians! [03:35] The Prevalence of Burnout in the Physician Community Allison talks about there are bad days as much as there are good days, which is highly prevalent in the physician community. In fact, 42% of physicians in the 2018 Medscape Report are burned out. Based on personal experience, Allison is passionate when it comes to this topic. She also works in the field of Neurology which ranks second on the list of fields that are most likely to experience burnout, second to Critical Care. More and more people are now researching burnout due to its prevalence in the community of physicians, residents, and medical students. Allison describes how burnout has affected her emotional wellbeing, feelings of self-worth, and even the ability to care for herself. "If you can't take care of yourself, you can't take care of other people well. All too often as physicians, we are sacrificing our own wellbeing so that we can take care of other people." [05:05]  Burnout as a Sign of Weakness In the onset of burnout, you begin to feel detached, dissociated, resigned, and separated in some way from the job you were trained to do. And even though it's a high percentage of physicians having burnout, it's not something you experience with other people. You experience it by yourself. "Burnout isn't something you experience with other people. You experience it by yourself." In medicine, what has been taught to us is that if you're strong enough to do it then great; but if you can't handle it, then you shouldn't do it. So if you're struggling with emotional difficulty or feeling exhausted, or if you're experiencing the human side of how difficult it is to be a physician and you talk about it or complain about it, or let it affect your work, then that's seen as a weakness and that it's not acceptable in medicine. This is a subconscious thing, but at the same time, it's something directly taught in a lot of places. You would then have to bury that way deep down inside of you, not in the hospital or in the clinic, but someplace else. If you can't handle it, then there's got to be something wrong with you. This is all a bunch of hullabaloo, but this is what we're taught, unfortunately. But it's not we, the people practicing medicine, who are at fault here as we are all human beings. The problem is we're surrounded by unbelievable pressures and so many different obligations, and other things that take away from the ability for us to practice medicine. For instance, these are things like clicking boxes and EMRs, filling out authorizations - things not about practicing medicine but fulfilling guidelines and nothing to do with directly looking after a patient. "The numbers and pressures on physicians, the number of things that people are being asked to do these days just gets bigger and bigger. The list gets longer and longer." [07:50] Premeds Experience Burnout Too! Premeds experience the same things as well, trying to live up to the standard they think they need to live up to - being a 4.0 student, 520 on the MCAT, and getting all the extracurricular activities in - shadowing and clinical experience. You try to get into the best medical schools and best residencies and be the best doctor. "Burnout is prevalent at every stage of the game. Unfortunately, suicide rates are high among med students and physicians." We can't fix the systemic issues and reason we're discussing it now so as you're going through this process, you get into a position of power where you can make some of these differences. It may be not on a national scale, but on a local scale, specifically for your hospital. That bein