Feeling Consumed

[EM4life]

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Hey guys, I'm a resident at the end of my second year. I just want to see what people in this forum do to prevent residency from utterly taking over their lives. More so recently than intern year, I feel like residency has just consumed me. I know that it's important not to take work home with me, but I can't seem to help it. I work my butt off, and I come home and can't seem to shake it off. I think about work, talk about work, and dream about work. It really bothers me and I don't like it. I'm wondering if anyone else has had this problem and see if I can get some advice on how to make it stop.

 

[ccfccp]

You're not alone. I know I have been feeling extremely run down the last couple of months (ironically the easiest months of this year.) To help, I try to do things outside of residency with my wife, my church, and other hobbies and activities. Unfortunately, most of the time I just want to sit and stare at the wall, like I don't have any motivation to do anything. I'm not really unhappy in by job or place, and I still actually like my job when I get there, but it's like I don't have any more emotion left to give it.

I don't have any novel advice, but I will say that everybody keeps telling me that it gets better as a senior, and then better still as an attending/fellow. I guess we'll see.

 

[deleted65604]

Hey guys, I'm a resident at the end of my second year. I just want to see what people in this forum do to prevent residency from utterly taking over their lives. More so recently than intern year, I feel like residency has just consumed me. I know that it's important not to take work home with me, but I can't seem to help it. I work my butt off, and I come home and can't seem to shake it off. I think about work, talk about work, and dream about work. It really bothers me and I don't like it. I'm wondering if anyone else has had this problem and see if I can get some advice on how to make it stop.

If you don't let residency take over your life, you aren't getting good training and you need to study/work more. It is intended to take over your life.

 

[Arcan57]

If you don't let residency take over your life, you aren't getting good training and you need to study/work more. It is intended to take over your life.

I'm not entirely sure if this in jest, but I mostly agree with it.

 

[jbar]

My suggestions are:

1: Make some rules about talking about work at home. No talking about it at dinner, or at all unless something great/terrible happens. Tell your significant other/friends about this rule so they can help you when you slip.

2:Make you home a work free space. So if you are going to do some studying, do it in a coffee shop or library. Put the journal articles and Rosen in a box (or under the bed), otherwise every time you see them you are reminded about work. Basically make your home a medicine free zone.

3: Nothing related to medicine/work just before sleep. No answering emails, no watching old re-runs of ER, no reading journal articles (also in rule 2). That may help cut down on the medical dreaming.

Hope that helps.

 

[shopsteward]

My understanding of residency is that you are working full time while simultaneously learning full-time. If that is so, then feeling consumed seems a natural reaction.

It might be worth doing a quick check on yourself to make sure that you are doing what you need to in order to be a successful resident but without imposing additional unnecessary burdens on yourself. (Just because there is a lot of work pressure on you does not mean that you can't also be a workaholic. I don't get that from your post, but you never know.)

It's good to do things that get you away from work, either mentally or physically, but such things take time, effort and often money, most of which are going to be in short supply for you at the moment. So by all means do something that isn't work, but be kind to yourself if it turns out not to be very much - the point of outside activities is to release pressure, not add a different sort of pressure.

It is usually true that things get better, but it's also true that you have to be on the look-out for them to get better and then take advantage of the fact when they do. A quick "up periscopes" every now and then to check whether things have got better yet will ensure that you don't miss it when it happens.

 

[The White Coat Investor]

Sit back and enjoy it. I miss residency. The joy of doing new things every month, always learning something new, always being able to bounce stuff off smart people, the camaraderie of embracing the suck, the free cafeteria food, trying to plan your call night well to get some sleep (and sometimes even getting it), the diseases and injuries you've never seen but only read about....ahhhhh. I kid you not, residency was one of my favorite jobs ever.

That said, when I got out I felt like I had stepped out of life for 3 years. My wife has close friends from the town I did my residency in that I swear I've never heard of before, much less met.

Realize that 3 years is a very short period of time. Learn as much as you can. Enjoy being able to really focus on one aspect of your life (your profession/training.) Especially in EM, realize the rest of your life will leave plenty of opportunity to do other things. The average person in my group works 100 hours a month.

P.S. Prioritize sleep, then family. Work, sleep, family. Try to work out every now and then. Ditch everything else. It'll still be there in 3 years.

 

[deleted65604]

Sit back and enjoy it. I miss residency. The joy of doing new things every month, always learning something new, always being able to bounce stuff off smart people, the camaraderie of embracing the suck, the free cafeteria food, trying to plan your call night well to get some sleep (and sometimes even getting it), the diseases and injuries you've never seen but only read about....ahhhhh. I kid you not, residency was one of my favorite jobs ever.

That said, when I got out I felt like I had stepped out of life for 3 years. My wife has close friends from the town I did my residency in that I swear I've never heard of before, much less met.

Realize that 3 years is a very short period of time. Learn as much as you can. Enjoy being able to really focus on one aspect of your life (your profession/training.) Especially in EM, realize the rest of your life will leave plenty of opportunity to do other things. The average person in my group works 100 hours a month.

P.S. Prioritize sleep, then family. Work, sleep, family. Try to work out every now and then. Ditch everything else. It'll still be there in 3 years.

What I said wasn't in jest. I second Active Duty. Suck it up and keep slogging through it. And third year is much better at most residencies, so there is a light at the end of the tunnel. You are a year away from big fat paychecks and lots of time off.