Reading & Resting: Practices for Faithfully Navigating Burnout in Medicine
Jon Tilburt, MD, Professor of Medicine, Mayo Clinic
Lydia Dugdale, MD, Associate Professor, Yale School of Medicine
Burnout is a common phenomenon among U.S. physicians, and Christian physicians are not immune. The problem of burnout creates integrity challenges for Christian physicians because of the high view of vocation that many bring to the work. To experience burnout from a calling (not just a job) is more than a psychological threat, it can be an existential one. A Christian doctor who no longer finds meaning and joy in a calling might question the foundation of his or her identity as a Christian physician and even contemplate leaving the profession. If the theologian Stanley Hauerwas is correct—that Christians want to live and die Christianly and Christian physicians want to live out their calling Christianly—how then should Christian doctors think and work through their own burnout Christianly?
The first part of our workshop will focus on the question of calling and how burnout challenges calling. For many disillusioned by the therapeutic managerialism of modern society, the common coping/recovery strategies for burnout, although sensible, seem banal or potentially disingenuous or theologically wrongheaded. Even resources offered by well meaning Christian organizations seem to boil down burnout to a kind of devotional recipe of scripture reading, family values, and generic aphorisms about time management. If burnout poses more than just a serious psychological challenge, rather one that runs deep to the core of a Christian physician’s identity, then the resources to mitigate burnout ought to match that depth.
We argue that facing burnout with Christian integrity requires a kind of spiritual and confessional rigor as well as relevance for Christian physicians. In the second and third parts of our workshop, we will draw on our own experience as confessing Protestant Christian physicians and present two such practices: reading and resting. The first involves the countercultural act of reading books, the second involves structured reflective resting through Sabbath observance. Both function as counter-formative practices in the face of the overwhelmed feelings, unsustainable workflows, and the fatigue that burnout brings. They counter physician obsession with efficiency and control.
The first speaker will offer reflections and resources for reading through mid-career burnout by examining theologically-informed but accessible writing from authors whose work touches on death and the meaning of life. He will argue, offering illustrative quotes from books on death and theology, memoir, and brief existential philosophical treatises, that careful, slow reading of such works can lay an essential groundwork for confession, grief, and surrender that is often necessary for one either to remain working within medicine, leave one’s current position, or leave the profession with integrity.
The second speaker will reflect experientially on the meaning of Sabbath for a well-ordered life in medicine. Sabbath serves as an archetype of rest in a covenantal ordering of Creation. She will begin by reasoning analogically from the Hebrew Bible’s account of the Israelites enslaved in Egypt -- a system focused on endless production and the accumulation of wealth that supplanted commitments to relationship, community, and well-being made rest a archetype of covenantal redemption for the Hebrew people. She will then describe the potency of the fourth commandment – that of Sabbath observance – and examine its relevance for her life and work. She will show how the implementation of Sabbath observance, now applied to life in 21st century medicine, serves to restore relationship, foster renewal, and stave off burnout as well as fostering a broader redemptive hope for a promised future for God’s people in the strange land of 21st century medicine whose production and accumulation stifle the rest, peace, and wholeness of God’s redemptive Shalom.
Each speaker will incorporate within their reflections key skills/practices that reinforce the themes of reading and resting.
A workshop format will provide sufficient time for fruitful conversation. The speakers, both of whom are mid-career academic doctors at highly competitive institutions, have published extensively on ethics, theology, and vocation, and will invite the audience to share their own experiences of fighting burnout for the edification of all in attendance.
This workshop targets clinicians in all fields and at all levels of training, but particularly mid-career physicians. We will not focus on challenges specific to trainees or physicians contemplating retirement. Each speaker will give 15-20 minute remarks, leaving the remainder of the session for audience interaction. Audience members will be asked to write down 2 behaviors related to reading and rest that might be incorporated into daily and weekly life.
Lydia Dugdale, MD, Associate Professor, Yale School of Medicine
Burnout is a common phenomenon among U.S. physicians, and Christian physicians are not immune. The problem of burnout creates integrity challenges for Christian physicians because of the high view of vocation that many bring to the work. To experience burnout from a calling (not just a job) is more than a psychological threat, it can be an existential one. A Christian doctor who no longer finds meaning and joy in a calling might question the foundation of his or her identity as a Christian physician and even contemplate leaving the profession. If the theologian Stanley Hauerwas is correct—that Christians want to live and die Christianly and Christian physicians want to live out their calling Christianly—how then should Christian doctors think and work through their own burnout Christianly?
The first part of our workshop will focus on the question of calling and how burnout challenges calling. For many disillusioned by the therapeutic managerialism of modern society, the common coping/recovery strategies for burnout, although sensible, seem banal or potentially disingenuous or theologically wrongheaded. Even resources offered by well meaning Christian organizations seem to boil down burnout to a kind of devotional recipe of scripture reading, family values, and generic aphorisms about time management. If burnout poses more than just a serious psychological challenge, rather one that runs deep to the core of a Christian physician’s identity, then the resources to mitigate burnout ought to match that depth.
We argue that facing burnout with Christian integrity requires a kind of spiritual and confessional rigor as well as relevance for Christian physicians. In the second and third parts of our workshop, we will draw on our own experience as confessing Protestant Christian physicians and present two such practices: reading and resting. The first involves the countercultural act of reading books, the second involves structured reflective resting through Sabbath observance. Both function as counter-formative practices in the face of the overwhelmed feelings, unsustainable workflows, and the fatigue that burnout brings. They counter physician obsession with efficiency and control.
The first speaker will offer reflections and resources for reading through mid-career burnout by examining theologically-informed but accessible writing from authors whose work touches on death and the meaning of life. He will argue, offering illustrative quotes from books on death and theology, memoir, and brief existential philosophical treatises, that careful, slow reading of such works can lay an essential groundwork for confession, grief, and surrender that is often necessary for one either to remain working within medicine, leave one’s current position, or leave the profession with integrity.
The second speaker will reflect experientially on the meaning of Sabbath for a well-ordered life in medicine. Sabbath serves as an archetype of rest in a covenantal ordering of Creation. She will begin by reasoning analogically from the Hebrew Bible’s account of the Israelites enslaved in Egypt -- a system focused on endless production and the accumulation of wealth that supplanted commitments to relationship, community, and well-being made rest a archetype of covenantal redemption for the Hebrew people. She will then describe the potency of the fourth commandment – that of Sabbath observance – and examine its relevance for her life and work. She will show how the implementation of Sabbath observance, now applied to life in 21st century medicine, serves to restore relationship, foster renewal, and stave off burnout as well as fostering a broader redemptive hope for a promised future for God’s people in the strange land of 21st century medicine whose production and accumulation stifle the rest, peace, and wholeness of God’s redemptive Shalom.
Each speaker will incorporate within their reflections key skills/practices that reinforce the themes of reading and resting.
A workshop format will provide sufficient time for fruitful conversation. The speakers, both of whom are mid-career academic doctors at highly competitive institutions, have published extensively on ethics, theology, and vocation, and will invite the audience to share their own experiences of fighting burnout for the edification of all in attendance.
This workshop targets clinicians in all fields and at all levels of training, but particularly mid-career physicians. We will not focus on challenges specific to trainees or physicians contemplating retirement. Each speaker will give 15-20 minute remarks, leaving the remainder of the session for audience interaction. Audience members will be asked to write down 2 behaviors related to reading and rest that might be incorporated into daily and weekly life.