My burnout started before I even finished residency.
I distinctly remember having numerous conversations with my wife about how I was seriously considering a critical care fellowship. Yes, it is true that critical care was my favorite part of Emergency Medicine but the darker truth was that I was afraid that I would not be able to work in ER long-term. I was frankly disappointed by the reality of working in the Emergency Room. I wasn’t saving lives every day or even doing cool procedures as often as I would have hoped. The volume of patients we had to see, the difficult conversations we had with patients and consultants, the defensive medicine we practiced, and the charting requirements all took away the shine of being the superhero ER doctor I thought I was going to be.
The point is that the person (me) who exuberantly wanted to be as doctor since age 13 was already demoralized by the U.S. healthcare system and the reality of practicing Emergency Medicine before I even finished residency. I forged on despite my misgivings about my future profession. I was able to treat patients for 10 years at multiple different ERs across the country. There were times where I truly enjoyed my job. There were patients who I truly feel I saved and I cannot think of anything more rewarding than that. I worked with amazing staff during my career.
I am going to be honest with you right now, like 100% honest. I am proud of the work I did in the ER. I am proud of myself for gutting out 10 years of a challenging job while feeling increasingly burnt out. My guilt started because I was showing up to work more annoyed and short-tempered than my baseline. It was harder to give more of myself to my patients and coworkers. I brought home my frustrations and would be irritated even on days off. I needed to make a change, I had to leave the ER.
The next layer of guilt was related to leaving a profession I dedicated so much time, energy, and money to. But here is the elephant in the room that we don’t talk about enough. I decided to go into Emergency Medicine as a single 24-year-old. My life looked vastly different at that time. Once I started a family, I entered a different career chapter or “season” of my life. I could no longer make Emergency Medicine work. And you know what, that’s okay. I am working on accepting that I can still make a difference in this world even without treating patients. One lesson that I have learned through all of this is that being an ER doctor who treated patients was more of my identity that I ever was willing to admit before.
You don’t have to stay in clinical medicine if you are miserable. You can still make a difference without being at the bedside. I am here to be your living proof of that.
Thanks for reading,
Phil