Hear Directly from our Clients
Dr. Sandro and his journey of Balancing Passion and Burnout
Sandro worked as a psychiatrist in a busy health network. He was committed to working in public health, as he felt that's where his skills were most needed.
Although the organisational chart showed three psychiatrists in his depart-ment, in the three years he had worked there he had only had one six-month period working with a psychiatrist colleague. The workload was huge, con-stant, complex, and draining. Many more patients needed inpatient beds than were available. Every day, he and the mental health nurses met with families who were out of their minds with fear about what their psychologically unstable relative would do next, and desperate to escalate the level of care provided to their family member.
Sandro found himself saying, 'Our hands are tied'. Yet this was not the kind of psychiatrist he wanted to be. He thought about going into private practice, he thought about working part time, and as he said to me, he had thought of leaving medicine altogether many times. Every way he looked, Sandro felt vulnerable. The safe space of coaching became his sanity while he processed these thoughts out loud.
On a daily basis, he asked: "How can I do the work I feel passionate about, when the system is not set up for me to do that? How can I meet the needs of these most needy of patients?. He was committed to the work. His heart beat for public healthcare that was accessible to everyone. And yet, it seemed like a hopeless cause.
Dr. Clara's Falling back into Medicine
Clara came to Australia in her early twenties. She owned her GP practice with her husband, and a further 15 associates worked there. Her children were at university and life was full. Despite all this, Clara found herself feeling burned out. At the point she came to me for coaching, she had been a practising GP for 25 years.
Although she loved her patients, many of whom she had known for a long time, she was fed up with the rudeness she often experienced. They expected her to do whatever they asked and had no regard for her clinical judgement.
On top of that, she was weighed down by a host of other factors, such as being tired, the burden of the administrative needs of her business, being fed up with people asking her where she was from, and the current lack of collegiality between the doctors in her practice. This was making her feel less tolerant of these entitled patients than she normally would be. One of the first things / asked her to do was to start noticing and naming her thoughts and feelings. She noticed her mood was low and her emotions were erratic, especially with her practice manager and at home. Clara also described her inner critic as too noisy.
We discussed starting a mindfulness habit to build her ability to manage all these challenging inputs. Clara was curious about mindfulness, saying that she had read lots of books about it, but didn't really understand how it applied to her or how it could help her at work.
We started working together, discussing how she could intersperse mindful moments throughout her day, using her feet, her breath, and her patients as her anchors. In addition, she started using a meditation app for five minutes daily, and she met with a meditation teacher to practise and talk about her experience with meditation. This committed action, experimenting, and practising over a few weeks allowed Clara to test and reflect. Learning in the supportive environment of coaching helped her remain accountable to her own goals.
Three years on, she describes herself as focused and steady and she enjoys her work. Clara credits her mindfulness practice and the time she committed to coaching with helping her fall in love with medicine again. She feels reconnected with her own intention, and able to weather the challenges of a busy and vibrant GP practice.
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