Physician Work 2/3

Valerie Brooke, MD

Feb 14, 20223 min read

Imposter Syndrome

I will never forget the first medication I ordered as newly practicing physician. It was my first internal medicine rotation of...

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The Stigma of Mental Health Illness in Medical Professionals

Valerie Brooke, MD

Feb 7, 20224 min read

The Stigma of Mental Health Illness in Medical Professionals

The other day one of my physician colleagues shared a story with me about some seemingly helpful advice he was given during the first...

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Valerie Brooke, MD

Jan 31, 20223 min read

Personal and Professional Perfectionism

To be perfect means to be “excellent or complete beyond practical or theoretical improvement.” Perfectionism is multi-dimensional and can...

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Valerie Brooke, MD

Jan 23, 20224 min read

Moral Injury

The term moral injury popped into the conversation about physician burnout back in 2018, when an article was published entitled...

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Valerie Brooke, MD

Jan 16, 20223 min read

Balancing the See Saw

On the way home from skiing last weekend my husband and I were humming along to the familiar 1968 Moody Blues song, “Ride…Ride my…blah...

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Valerie Brooke, MD

Jan 9, 20224 min read

The Owl and the Cheese

In 2001, Drs Friedman and Forster designed an experiment where two sets of college students were tasked to complete a computer maze,...

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Valerie Brooke, MD

Jan 2, 20225 min read

Doctors Don't Do Lunch

As part of my research on physician burnout, I have been reading books by other physicians who suggest multiple different strategies for...

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Valerie Brooke, MD

Dec 26, 20213 min read

A New Holiday Story

Yesterday at work, on Christmas Day, one of my patient’s care givers said to me, “Why are you here on Christmas? Did you get the short...

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Valerie Brooke, MD

Dec 19, 20212 min read

Professional Accomplishment

In addition to emotional exhaustion and depersonalization, not having a sense of personal accomplishment is the third symptom of burnout....

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Valerie Brooke, MD

Dec 12, 20213 min read

Resilience

What type of person comes to mind when you think of the characteristic of resilience, the ability to continuously bounce back from...

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Valerie Brooke, MD

Dec 5, 20213 min read

Depersonalization

The meaning of depersonalization has always alluded me. How can one not feel like a person? I finally understood it when I experienced...

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Valerie Brooke, MD

Nov 28, 20212 min read

Compassion Fatigue

When I realized last year I was feeling burned out in my job as a physician, I dove into learning as much as I could about the symptoms...

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Valerie Brooke, MD

Nov 21, 20213 min read

Permission To Feel

I recently had an interaction with a patient that had suffered a stroke and it got me thinking about emotions. I was asking this patient...

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Valerie Brooke, MD

Nov 14, 20213 min read

Emotional Exhaustion

This was a vivid dream I had in August of 2020, after a 10-hour day of work, on day 4 of a 12-day stretch at the rehabilitation hospital....

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Valerie Brooke, MD

Oct 17, 20213 min read

Death by a Thousand Cuts

That was the last line of a frustrated email from a physician in our medical group. She was responding to yet another notification from...

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Talking to Patients about the COVID Vaccine

Valerie Brooke, MD

Sep 7, 20214 min read

Talking to Patients about the COVID Vaccine

When I admit a patient to the acute rehabilitation hospital, after asking them about the history of their stroke or brain injury,...

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Valerie Brooke, MD

Aug 23, 20213 min read

Surrendering to the Surge

The sense of dread in the air inside the hospital last week was paired with the thick smoke and ashes falling from the multiple fires in...

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Valerie Brooke, MD

Aug 9, 20213 min read

Doctors Don't Like the System Either

One of my readers made a suggestion in response to my recent post Assembly Line Medicine, where I described the experience of seeing my...

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Valerie Brooke, MD

Aug 3, 20214 min read

Physician Worth

Last week I had my physician evaluation, the first one since starting my current position at my hospital five years ago. I sat across...

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Valerie Brooke, MD

Jul 5, 20215 min read

Boxes and Boundaries

Many years ago, a wise therapist gave me some excellent guidance in how to stay sane while parenting a teenager. “Set up a box of...

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