Flagship hospital. Best care.
For whom? Patients.
Patients?
Doctors serve patients … Doctors serve hospitals. Doctors serve self.
All equal…?
Hospital hierarchy. Doctor’s well-being. Hospital funds. Doctor’s family.
Patient care? Best care?
Which master is the master?
Depends on the day? Maybe the patient? Maybe the hospital?
Maybe self?
All cannot win. Do not serve self. Best care.
Best care?
This poem was written for an exercise that we completed as a class. The assignment involved writing a 55-word short story in 15 minutes. As I reflected on the clerkship year during the exercise, I thought of the often conflicting priorities that providers find themselves torn between and my personal struggles with burnout.
Talking about burnout is not something I enjoy. Discussions involving burnout are often associated with the perception of complaining, which makes discussing the topic with faculty members difficult. It is almost as if you are perceived as faulty or broken. Faculty try and empower students with phrases such as, “change the system” and “be the change you want to see.” However, when you reach out about burnout, you are then told, “this is the sacrifice you chose to make. We all had to do it. It is part of the profession,” or my personal favorite, “students before you have graduated and students after you will graduate.” With the highest suicide rate among the professions, when will we decide that the notion of self-sacrifice should not entail the sacrifice of mental stability and thus life?
Author’s note: The opinions and assertions expressed herein are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Uniformed Services University or the Department of Defense.
Image credit: Lonely by kbrookes is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 license.
Resident Contributing Writer
F. Edward Hébert School of Medicine - Uniformed Services University
Allen is a recent graduate from the Uniformed Services University and an Intern at the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, MD. He was born in Germany and moved to Missouri when he was 12. In 2015, he graduated from the University of Missouri - Columbia with a Bachelor of Science in Biochemistry. Before starting medical school in 2017, he worked as an Assistant Manager of a plasma donation center, a live-in Volunteer Firefighter/AEMT, and he co-founded a company with his best friend from college. He enjoys restoring a 1977 F-150, hiking, and spending time with his puppy and his wife, who also happens to be an Intern at Walter Reed.
