Cover Story by Casey L . Penn
MICHAEL BOLDING , DO . photo courtesy of Washington Regional Medical Center .
Fighting Burnout , Finding Resiliency During a Long-term Crisis
In “ normal ” life , professional burnout for physicians and medical personnel is often brought on by exhaustion , a lack of worklife balance , increased work demands , and changes to the health care system . The health care climate over the past 18 months has been far from “ normal .” Since the start of the pandemic , Arkansas has seen nearly 500,000 cases of COVID-19 and more than 7,000 deaths . Burnout factors are at an all-time high as hospital beds remain full . Physicians and staff have worked tirelessly for months on end – often isolated from friends and family , and the delta variant continues spreading through our state and nation .
Erick Messias , MD , MPH , PhD , formerly of UAMS , now professor and chair of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neuroscience for Saint Louis University School of Medicine , is seeing the same situation in his new post as he saw in Arkansas . “ The health care workforce is exhausted by the pandemic – like everyone else but worse ,” said Dr . Messias . “ Some good news is that positive emotions like hope and motivation are still highly prevalent in health care . A significant majority express hope that life returns to normal ‘ in early 2022 .’”
Unfortunately , high hopes for a return to normal during this epidemic have been dashed before . “ A lot of us , even experts like myself that do this for a living , thought the worst was behind us around March 2021 , when hospitalizations and cases decreased so much ,” said Amanda Novack , MD , medical director of Infection Prevention for Baptist Health Systems and medical director of Antimicrobial Stewardship . “ It wasn ’ t fathomable that we would find ourselves in this situation again when we have a pretty good preventative treatment . It ' s a whole new ball game . It ' s a different level of fatigue that people are dealing with right now .”
Michael Bolding , DO , a hospitalist and one of two main attending physicians for COVID-19 patients at Washington Regional Medical Center in Fayetteville , compared the current climate to a race with no finish line . “ In a race , they give
“ It ’ s a whole new ball game . It ’ s a different level of fatigue
you the elevation chart ahead of time . You know when you ’ ll have to run harder and when you can coast ,” explained Bolding , who is also an avid runner . “ We haven ’ t had that luxury with this pandemic . When I signed on to do this in March of 2020 , I knew it was going to be crazy . I thought , ‘ We ’ ll be full of patients , and I ’ ll probably have to move into the hospital and not see my family for a while … maybe six months max .’ And our team , when we saw a big peak in the summer , we were like , ‘ Well , that was certainly not fun . Some days were nightmarish , but we did okay .’ But when the vaccination rate got to 39 % and stayed there , we saw it coming again . When it came back strong , it was – in a word – defeating .”
that people are dealing with right now .”
– Amanda Novack , MD
104 • The Journal of the Arkansas Medical Society www . ArkMed . org