Burnout in medical school is one of the most common feelings that medical students face. There is so much to learn, in what seems like very little time, that every day can be overwhelming. It is also very easy to lose yourself as a medical student because you don’t take the time to do the things you enjoy. I recently had a very tough block (heme and renal) and the burnout hit the max for me. I knew I was burnt out because of how irritable and tired I was. Even though I had hit this feeling a couple of times before, this was at a whole new level. If you don’t catch burnout and nip it in the bud quickly, you open the door to a host of other problems down the line.
Causes of burnout in medical school
It’s no secret that some of the most high-achieving individuals enter medical school. Even if they are not the “smartest” or don’t have the highest test scores and grades, they are used to being high achieving in something. So imagine the shock of medical school and continuously taking L’s and feeling beat down.
I’m not going to lie, medical school truly is hazing. Only the tough survive and things seem unnecessarily difficult. However, it’s the name of the game and until there’s a huge paradigm shift in medical education:
This high stress environment full of high achievers who are not highly achieving is a breeding ground for burnout in medical school. Students feel overloaded with the number of tasks they are expected to perform exceptionally well, the overwhelming loom of boards, residency, and other long-term aspects of becoming a physician, high emotional exhaustion, high depersonalization, and a low sense of personal accomplishment.
Some of the topics we discuss are heartbreaking, while some are so tedious and complex it seems impossible that we’ll be able to learn it. Also, the road to medical school is a marathon. So the end can seem so far that it’s easy to run out of gas before you get there.
Consequences of unchecked burnout in medical school
Although burnout in medical school is common, it’s not something that everyone just takes in stride without acknowledgement. It’s a true response to a stressor that needs a nullifying response. If you don’t take the time to address feelings of burnout, you will burn all the way out.
There’s a book that I wrote a review on called “What Doctors Feel” by Dr. Danielle Ofri, M.D. She writes about burnout at the physician level and how apathetic it can turn physicians. This apathy is the exact problem that patients have with caregivers. We can come off as cold, distant and too busy to take the time to truly understand our patients. To us, however, we’re just doing the job.
But being a doctor is so much more than a job. And before entering medical school, that was at the forefront of everyone’s “why I want to be a doctor” essay. No one goes through this much training and stress just to receive a paycheck. You can go do anything and receive a paycheck. We chose to go to medical school because of the impact we wanted to have and the knowledge we wanted to be able to share with our community.
So when we let burnout go unbridled from early in our careers, then we head down the path of forgetting why we even wanted to become doctors. And our future patients will feel the brunt of that. Plus, doctors work long hours, so if you are miserable at your job and feel no satisfaction in it, then that’s a large part of your life where you feel awful. Take the time now to start recognizing and dealing with feelings of burnout so when the road gets much harder, as it inevitably will, you have to tools to avoid a meltdown.
Unchecked burnout in medical school can lead to severe fatigue, low quality of life, poor overall well-being, increased dropout risk, and increased suicidal ideation.
Overcoming burnout in medical school
The positive thing about burnout in medical school is that it can be temporary if you catch it early. That’s why it’s important to know the signs of burnout and what it looks like. If you experience any of the following feelings, then it may be time to reevaluate your daily coping skills:
- Sense of failure and self-doubt
- Feeling helpless, trapped and defeated
- Detachment and feeling alone
- Loss of motivation
- Increasingly negative with a pessimistic outlook
- Decreased satisfaction and sense of accomplishment
- Increased irritability
- Apathy
- Random bouts of crying or emotional breakdowns
- Sleep disturbances or unusual sleep patterns (including sleeping more)
Below are some of the ways that I have learned to overcome my own burnout in medical school so I can continue having good days. Every day is not easy, and some days really do suck. But when you learn to deal with any potential triggers of feelings of burnout early, then you can ensure a bad day is really just one bad day.
Maintain your sleep schedule
When you’re in medical school, it’s so easy to just throw sleep away. However, sleep is vital for medical students. It’s also a great way to avoid burnout in medical school. When you sleep, you give your mind a chance to process everything you’ve learned. Sometimes, medical school can be so frustrating because you put in all this time to learn something, and you can’t remember it. But while you sleep, you brain forms extra neural connections to help consolidate your learning and memories for the day.
Sleep and rest also give your body a chance to recharge the battery. When toddlers are tired, they have 0 tolerance for anything, and they start throwing tantrums. Adults are the same way, it’s just our tantrums are more controlled…until they’re not. Everyone needs sleep, and if you can get on average 7-8 hours, then you still have 16-17 hours to do everything it is you want to do. That’s plenty of time, but you won’t be able to get anything done if you don’t get the proper rest that you need.
Take time for yourself everyday
When I was deep into the heme and renal block, I stopped working out and writing. It was really difficult for me to justify taking that time when I could be using it to study such a difficult topic. However, I didn’t realize until after the exam that cutting myself off from doing the activities I really enjoy was not productive.
In order to avoid burnout in medical school, it’s imperative that you take time for yourself everyday. Even if you just take 15 minutes and just close your eyes or watch your favorite YouTube channel. I have classmates who love the Pomodoro method which gives them little bits of time to enjoy themselves.
If you like to cook, workout, read, etc., then continue to take that time. There are definitely going to be days that you can’t do those things because you’ll just get too busy. But you don’t want to make a habit of it. Write down in your planner one thing you’re going to do for yourself each day and be intentional about keeping that date with yourself.
Listen to your body
Your body will tell you when it’s time to give it a rest. And you may think it’s grit to stay up until all hours of the night and work through the pain. But there’s a difference between grinding, and working yourself to death. The first one consists of you working hard and pushing yourself past superficial barriers. The second one consists of you working yourself the point of your own detriment.
If you’re exhausted to the point that you’re reading the same sentence five times in a row, then you’re not being very productive. I have a classmate who will literally lay down and go to sleep anywhere they’re at because they feel like if their body is that tired, then they should get some rest and try studying again when they wake up.
If your body is dehydrated, sore, wound up, or even sick, you need to listen to it. At the end of the day, medical student or not, you’re still human. When you forget to be human for too long, then you put yourself at risk for breaking down. If your physical wellness isn’t up to par, then how can you expect your brain to cooperate and learn biochemistry?
Continuously take stock of your body’s signals. It’s giving you warning signs to chill out before it forces you to take a timeout. Sleep in a little on a couple of days of the week, or go out and get some Vitamin D, especially as the weather is getting nice. Don’t ignore your body and think you’re showing signs of grit, because the body keeps score and always wins.
Keep a solid social circle
Burnout in medical school can have you feeling so isolated. Medical school in general can be an isolating experience just because of the number of hours spent holed up studying. Burnout can make you so emotionally exhausted and irritable that you don’t even want to speak with or hang out with anyone. You don’t want to get to that point because friends keep you sane.
You social circle should be something that you really try to keep up with. It’s so easy to cast away your non-medical school friends just because you spend so much time with your classmates. And don’t get me wrong, I would be having a miserable time if I hadn’t made friends in medical school. But they’re a reminder, too, of how crazy medical school is.
Invest in your non-medical school friendships too as they can give you something from the outside. They are a nice break and always are the first ones to tell you how proud of you they are. In medical school, relative success is a b*tch because everyone around you is so smart and getting published and winning awards. They can really make you feel like you’re not doing anything. But your non-medical school friends will remind you that you’re in medical school and doing the damn thing, and that’s always a nice reminder.
Continue doing activities you love
As I said earlier, I stopped writing and going to the gym just because I thought every extra second studying counted. However, what I didn’t realize was that by not taking this time, my brain couldn’t be as efficient when I was studying. It was tired and bored of looking at the same thing. Brains need variety so there’s some urgency when it’s focused on one task. When there are no other tasks, our minds drift and get tired, and our overall productivity is down.
Also, when we do activities we love, we are introducing parts of our day where we can see success. In medical school, it can be so random and rare that you see success that you can become pessimistic and cynical. However, when you get up and get a workout in, no one can take away that success. It’s a 100% guaranteed W because all you had to do was get up and go. But this isn’t something that everyone can do, so you can still feel a sense of accomplishment. If you have a hobby that you’re really good at or a book that you’ve been dying to read, achieving these goals helps to offset the lack of achievement you can feel in medical school.
Medical school is a long-term relationship, but so is the one wit yourself. Don’t neglect that one because at the end of the day, medical school is over in ~4 years. However, you have the relationship with yourself for the rest of your life. No one wants to be in a relationship with someone who isn’t good to be around or has nothing interesting about them. So cultivate the relationship with yourself and continue developing outside of medical school so when school is over, you’ve still got some good stuff going on.
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