My Burnout Journey Begins
Moral Distress and Burnout are personal for me
Here's why...
⬇ Read to the end to discover what I did this week
My first overnight on-call (nearly 10 years ago)
I was called in at 2am
🏥 A young man lay alone in a small ER room
He drove his car off a bridge
🚑 The first responders fished him out of the water
They did CPR on the short ride to the hospital
As I stood, alone, in the thin rectangle of a room with him
Only one of us was breathing
😥In fact, we didn't even know who he was
John Doe
So, I knew
Working in health care is hard
It has been hard for ten years
😷 Except the last three have been...
Extra
🕖 60-80 hour weeks
Overwhelm, rising death tolls
😣 Ethics consults and committee meetings were more intense
Writing ethics policies about scarce healthcare resources
🙅♂️ Restricting visitors (against my beliefs)
Leading a team that responded to as many as a dozen deaths in one day
😠 Leadership conflict
Personal tragedies large and small piled on top of the mountain of workplace stress
Bad things happen
But when you feel helpless
Powerless.
It's different
In the middle of it all, I watched a good friend die on the same day she gave birth to her first child
We took the lead in support of her young husband and the baby
💔 Brokenhearted
Earlier this year, our son came down with appendicitis while we were in Puerto Rico
The remote island of Vieques, to be specific
🛩 Midnight airlift to San Juan
Emergent flight back home for surgery (he's fine)
🌊 Our house flooded in July, and was just recently fully repaired
It's fair to say that life has sucked since March 2020, at work at outside of work
So, I woke up on September 5, 2022
My 44th birthday
And something was wrong
With me
My heart was out of rhythm
💓 The Apple Watch confirmed--AFib
My first time
In the ER, I was cardioverted (shocked with 250 joules)
Without sedation (my choice)
All the follow up you expect
Then, a month later, another first
😐 I was diagnosed with depression 😐
My first time
I beleived everything was unrelated: AFib, work and life stress, and depression
I said as much to my counselor
She cocked her head, smiled a bit and said, "Really?"
Stress
Became moral distress
Became burnout
🛣 There is no straight road back from all this
But I've leaned on my team, and they have helped
I have adjusted my expectations of myself
I have listened to my doctor and therapist (and bride)
And I took this week off
🗓 A mental health week (not just day)
I made a list of rest-and-rejuvinate activities
📉 I honored the fact that my energy is low
I made a point to enjoy good things
I journaled and prayed
And I made a list of everything I wish had not happened over the last few years
Every line began with "I am sorry that..."
Then
😞 I forgave myself
I took some deep breaths
⌛ And recognized that "getting better" takes time
#mentalhealth #ethics #healthcare #hospital #workplacewellness #burnout
