Cards Wives/Spouses and General Burnout

[TulipsAndSunscreen]

I'm not a cards spouse either but a Uro spouse in a gen surg intern year - not gonna lie, we don't have great work/life balance going on in our lives right now . While I do think physician burnout is a significant problem, I think several aspects of that report are universal and apply outside of medicine. For example, did you notice the highest rates of burnout are among people in their 30s/40s? These are people with (on average) young children and demanding family lives. I think that all busy young professionals are subject to burnout. It's really acute in medicine since so much time/effort/money has gone into their training and their job has a high emotional burden.

[moonlight]

Since I feel bad about bitching about pathology this week and biting the hand that feeds me and all, I wanted to jump back to this thread from last week and say I was not at all surprised to see pathology at the bottom of the burned-out list. Some other chart I saw somewhere also showed pathology with one of the highest average ages of physicians in practice. DNR = do not retire. One day you'll find them slumped over at the scope and then they might be done, and even then, please bury them with the scope, if possible.

She couldn't have said it any better. This is our experience thus far to a T. One attending at our location started working as a Pathologist in the late 1960's and he just reduced to 3 days a week! They see no point in retirement at all. Its freakishly amazing.

I just wanted to send out a hug. I know how it feels when you first start out and your trying to figure out what's to come. Sort of like LJane said, give it to me good or bad. I wanna be ready for it. I think its a totally normal reaction given the stage you are at right now. People will tell you that he's just starting out and he could change his mind and not to think or worry about it, but many many students know from the very beginning what they are called to do and they never change their minds. Some people know themselves really well and he might stick with it all the way through. If that's the case then own it! Its better to be married to someone that knows what they want rather than dealing with all the doubt and possible resentment. To me that would cause burnout much quicker than anything.