Persist While Others Quit: How to Avoid Burnout in Med School
During your time as a medical student, you may find yourself suffering from extreme anxiety. Your deal with difficulties that can become so overwhelming that you feel like just giving up. But if you want to achieve your goals of becoming a doctor, you must persist while others quit.
Your life consists of countless hours of studying and demanding tasks you must accomplish. Learning how to become a doctor is rewarding, but it is also demanding.
What is the burnout zone? It’s essentially a time in your life when you lack enthusiasm for work and school. People that suffer from burnout have low sense of personal accomplishment.
Of all American workers, physicians have it the worst. Medscape reports that 46% of physicians in the US admitted to burnout in 2015. Most of these physicians are on the front lines. They have crucial medical goals centered around specialties in emergency and primary care.
Avoiding Burnout as a Medical Student
As a future physician, your duty will soon become hectic too. That means you have a chance of suffering from burnout yourself. So, how to you avoid entering the ‘burnout’ zone?
If you find yourself starting to suffer from burnout, take some time to re-examine your career goals. Make sure you still want to become a doctor someday. Once you determine you do, make changes in your life so you can persevere while going after your medical career goals.
Set short-term goals to help keep you on track. And use time management skills to make sure everything you need to do gets done on time. This helps ensure that you have more successes than failures. That definitely helps avoid burnout.
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Persist While Others Quit: Never Give Up
If you’re having trouble studying with a clear head, try going to the library more often. The change of atmosphere could work wonders. Work on practice problems and take extra notes whenever you can. Don’t understand the course material? Ask your professors for help. Or join a medical student study group.
Ask your professor if you can bring a Dictaphone to class so you can listen to the lecture in your off time. This can improve your test scores and lessen burnout by taking some tasks of your plate.
Going to med school to become a doctor can be draining for some students. Work can be frustrating and long hours are inevitable. It’s true that burnout isn’t always avoidable. But the best thing you can do is keep your chin up to avoid drowning as the tide comes in each day.
If the stress becomes too much to bear and you’re feeling unmotivated, slow down for a bit and take a break. Even if you just need a change of scenery or a chance to re-orient yourself, there’s no shame in stopping to catch your breath. Just stay strong and don’t give up.
When you stick to your goals, it’s all worth it in the end. Saving a person’s life, bringing another life into the world even finding the cure to cancer, are what future doctors’ dreams are made at the end of the day.
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The possibilities for your future in medicine are endless. Just try to keep your eyes on the prize and remember this: you won’t be a med student forever. So, be sure to persist while others quit.
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