Burnout, an unknown danger.

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Every student has felt mentally drained in a long period of tests and study due to the great demands that the educational system has put on us during university. Mostly at the end of the semester where you lack time to be able to study everything and be prepared for the tests.

The year 2020, which was a year of adaptations, changes, and losses, has seen an increase in the presence of students with characteristic symptoms.

This term burnout has been increasingly studied and has been more frequent among medical students, residents, and graduate physicians. 

A Cambridge study on the topic of pre-residency students has shown that “1 in 2 medical students are suffering from burnout even before residency.”

The topic was first mentioned in Herbert Freudenberger’s “Burnout: The High Cost of High Achievement” He defines burnout as “the extinction of motivation or encouragement especially for those who devote themselves to a cause or a relationship that fails to produce results.”

Reminder: It can happen to anyone regardless of the field of work and university course. However, the article is focused on medical students and medical residents.

What is burnout anyway?

Burnout is an emotional, physical, and mental state of complete exhaustion caused by an excessive and prolonged amount of stress. “This occurs when the individual feels emotionally drained and unable to keep up with the constant demands of everyday life”

It can be generated by chronic stress due to working/studying for several hours with a large load of content to study or too many problems to solve in a short time.

In addition, it can be started by a lack of clarity of objectives, lack of time to study for a test, and other stressors that can be financial, family, cultural, etc.

Remember that it is not caused by just having stress, but the sum of stressors where the individual already has chronic stress for a while. Also, these stressors can be varied, could be related to personal life, such as academic. 

As a result, we can see the importance of the subject that we are looking at.

In this way, the longer the stress, the individual begins to lose interest in performing daily tasks and begins to present the following feelings:

  • Demotivation
  • Start to hate what he does and has no personal fulfillment in completing the tasks.
  • Leisure activities that he used to do. Example: I like reading books (casually) starts to lose taste.
  • Tendency to isolate himself from family and friends.
  • Favorite food begins to lose flavor and pleasure.

How does a person with burnout feel?

A person who has presenting burnout symptoms could be presencing: loss in the performance of their work/study, thus having less productivity, less energy, in consequence, uses more time to complete tasks.

Could be feeling completely pressured, useless due to not being able to progress with the goals resulting in giving everything up, whatever he’s doing at the moment due to complete exhaustion.

How to identify burnout in symptoms?

– Physical symptoms: Headache, pain, gastrointestinal problems, decreased immune action with the possibility of presenting frequent diseases. (allergies, skin irritations, flu, and viral/bacterial infections.)

– Emotional symptoms: Tired all the time, lack of energy, feeling drained. Doubts about what you are doing or if you can achieve goals, feeling of failure, incapacity, defeat thoughts, loneliness, and pessimism in the face of results and challenges.

– Habit changes: Social isolation, increased procrastination (looks for ways to escape from what he has to do and prolongs study time), may have eating disorders (convulsive eating or the opposite such as loss of hunger), tendency to use chemical substances such as drugs and alcohol as an escape from stress.

– Reduced performance: Affected productivity, for example, a student who needs to hand in assignments or maintain constancy in the study has difficulties concentrating on the task, having attention deviations, and making him prolong the time to perform it much longer. You may have negative thoughts about the study you are doing, and you may have a loss of self-esteem, feeling unable or useless to perform the task.

How did I give importance to the topic?

After finishing my 4th semester or going into my 3rd year, I had the felling of complete exhaustion, have some moments that I caught myself losing interest in my study.

I had a lot to deliver in a short time, besides, I wasn’t doing all the subjects due to having already completed subjects a year prior, but many classmates were doing the complete curriculum, and unfortunately the phrase “just study” had already lost its effect due to not have time to see everything.

It was at this point that I had to review some concepts in my life and start practicing new habits that would benefit my health and could maintain my balance, both physical and mental.
Recognizing alerts given by my body, I was able to start looking for ways throughout the year I could take care of my mind and physique because I knew that if I hadn’t given importance to the signs, I could have presented a severe burnout.

I had to know how my limits as a human being, know that I can’t just be studying and forget about the basics that I had to do to take care of myself, feed myself properly, sleep properly.
That’s what everyone says we should do, but it’s a very present reality for me.

Two principles to give importance.

I’ve been giving attention to these two principles, which I consider an important pillar in my daily life and help me to keep the balance in everyday life.

physical health principle

There are many articles on the internet showing the importance of doing physical exercises, although, in practice, this goes much further than just preventing cardiovascular diseases in the long term.

I did a personal test and saw that if I don’t do physical exercises I can have sleeping problems, like insomnia, due to the accumulation of cortisol (stress hormone), making me spend more time tossing around in bed. Resulting in the next day waking up exhausted and inefficient.

In addition, physical exercise helps us to clarify our thoughts, as we put aside our daily problems a little to focus on a beneficial activity.

Physical exercise helps us improve our mental health and our mood. It helps release chemicals that help our bodies relax so we can deal with stress. Thus also reducing the risk of developing depression.

It also helps to maintain our thinking, our learning by releasing proteins and chemicals that allow us to improve the functioning structure of our neurons.

The physical exercise could be from pulling weights in the gym, running, playing basketball, soccer, but we must do with consistency, frequency, and always progressively increasing the intensity.

Principle of emotional health.

Emotional health principle: This principle is important as it encompasses some personal issues that may vary from person to person although the concept is the same.

This principle has the importance of taking care of our emotions in different circumstances of our everyday basis. That’s why in moments of intense study it is important to be able to set aside time for yourself, to escape a little from everyday life, in a balanced way.

How can this be done? Now you can do multiple things for example:

Moods Post-It Note Meaning Emotions and Feelings

  • If not with people, make time for yourself.
  • Read a new book
  • Watch a sports game or play a little video game.
  • Try to take a new course which would not demand so much of your time.
  • Learn something new (playing an instrument, origami, etc.).
  • Set aside time to be with friends, whether on an outing to be able to eat something at someone’s house (taking care that we are still in a pandemic)
  • Being with family and in the company of those, we love, boyfriend, husband, or wife.

Being able to set aside time for these categories creates emotions in us that can be beneficial, preventing the formation of chronic stress and causing burnout in the future.

We can see that emotions in life will be with us, even though emotions can often harm us at times when we need concentration.

For example, before an exam, we tend to be extremely nervous or anxious about the exam, thinking about a million things. We know that those sentiments and preoccupations are related directly to emotions, often out of fear of the negative outcome.

I try to use the time I have to be productive and be able to study what I’m doing, I try to rationalize things for myself as they are, many times tests and exam boards we have no control over what is going to be evaluated, how it goes ask if it will be fair or not. We often want to be in control of everything that is going to happen and that’s why we are afraid because we don’t know the future, resulting in nervousness and anxiety.

In that case I try to see things by the logical way. Thinking about the things I can do in the present time.

For example, I have no control over how I will be evaluated, but I have control over what I am doing at the moment and what I will do to prepare for the exam.

So I try to do everything I can. After that, I can relax and go to a test with peace because I know that I did everything I could to study and prepare.

Therefore, understanding that we have limits, that we are human, and that we are not perfect allows us to better control our emotions and not aggressively overload ourselves, as this can generate burnout, doing it constantly and for a long time.

Does Burnout have any prevention? And if I already have symptoms what to do?

The good news is, there is prevention and there is a way to treat it.

If you are already experiencing symptoms of burnout, you must seek help first.

Of course, talking is not easy, in practice, students or people often think that no one will understand because each person is different, in their way. However, your can seek help, either with psychologists or with true friends, people you trust and don’t judge you, and who are willing to listen to you.

And if you recognize someone with burnout, the most important thing you can do is take a moment to listen, in case you don’t know what to say, just listen, because know that it helps a lot.

Some steps:

1. to recognize.

2. seek help.

3. Never blame yourself

4. Recognize your limits

5. To observe some points and prepare changes, I will list some examples:

Environment: try to change the environment, see new places to study, be with the right people at the right times.

I prefer to study alone because I know I will be more comfortable thinking and concentrating. The environment significantly influences as a possible stressor, whether living with other people or external stressors that you have in the house or room in which you live.

Habits: Recognize which habits have been beneficial for the person, and be able to plan and set goals for changes inhabits.

For example, sleep at least 8 hours a night. Try to plan and implement this objective over time.

How do you see your study or your career?

See how you consider your career and see some points such as:

  • is it a heavy heigh to study?
  • if you hate studying?
  • hate what you do?
  • is it exhausting for you?


Try taking the test of asking yourself “what are you doing today could you do for 5 years?” if yes, would you be happy? Would you feel fulfilled?
In case the answers are negative, try to rethink if what you are doing is meaningful to you as a person, if it makes you happy, because the more your career goes, the more challenging it becomes, so it is important to be able to determine How do you see your career? If over time it will satisfy you in your work.

What are your priorities?

From now on you need to determine what priorities you must have for a good academic performance.

Prioritize a regular diet, with fruits, grains, and vegetables, that is nutritious, and can nourish you with energy to be able to study/work for long hours. Get exercise, so you can release stress.

Set a good amount of sleep so you can save what you’ve studied and wake up the next day refreshed.

Ever heard that your memory superpower is sleep? Yea! But sleep at the correct times.

Try not to sleep late, and not to wake up too late, because as much as you sleep longer, it can also affect your physique and your routine. I recommend not sleeping after 11 pm and being able to wake up between 6-8 am, as you will have more time during the day to study and do the things you need to do.

Our body biologically understands that when it’s nighttime starts to show some signals to us that we need to rest, for me works this way.

Remember again that each works differently.

I am writing based on experiences that I have lived and what I have learned and searched. Knowing this, I know that I still have a lot to learn.

– kelvin

References:

Published by Kel

Hello everyone, im in the 2o year of med school, currently living in Argentina. I do speak 3 languages fluently, Portuguese, English, and Spanish. Im from Brazil. My purpose with this blog is to share some things that I use to help me study and stay focused over the year, share some new things that I have learned over the week, books that I recommend reading and to connect with other people. Also, share some experience about other places that I went.

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