2 Artifacts from the Semester that Reflect my Writing Developing

Artifact #1: Project #1 Reflection

My research helped me see that there is a lot more that goes into burnout in neurology and neurosurgery than I thought before. I used to only consider the long hours and super stressful work as the main causes of burnout, but a lot of the research I looked at taught me that there is much more, like depression, the lack of addressing mental health, and the crazy workload due to understaffed hospitals. This showed how dependent/interconnected everything is. I now hope that readers see that burnout does not equal weakness, but rather it is multiple factors that have built up over the years. A lot of the sources that I used were very helpful. The most useful ones were Dyrbye et al., Shanafelt et al., and Zaed et al. These sources gave me good stats about burnout that helped me connect it to a lot of different factors to support my research question. They also helped me debate the idea that burnout comes with a job. So I used them to answer parts of my question throughout the whole paper. In between drafts, I changed my theme from burnout being an individual issue to being more of a structural one. I also focused a lot on explaining burnout in my earlier ones, and in my final draft, I took it and applied it to multiple factors within the medical field. One thing I struggled with was using my sources without making my paper overly formal and lacking my own voice. I had a hard time blending evidence with opinion, so in my later draft, I really tried to do this while making my argument stronger and more credible.

Artifact #2: Mock Article Artifact from Project #2

Burnout in Neuroscience is a crisis and should not be normalized.

Burnout is something that has been normalized in medicine for a long time now. It has now been labelled as something that is just “part of the job”. There is nothing normal about the long hours, high stress, and constant pressure that this demanding specialty has. Research shows that burnout is more serious than just being stressed; in fact, Dyrebye et al. suggest that it is closely tied to mental health issues like anxiety, depression, and even suicidal thoughts (Dyrebye et al.). A lot of studies have found associations between burnout and depression symptoms among residents, which shows how early on this issue begins within physicians’ careers.

The challenges that Neurologists and Neurosurgeons face are vastly different than the ones other fields of medicine face. They have super long hours and are making life-changing decisions. This constant high level of responsibility can lead to emotional exhaustion and physicians detaching themselves from their work and patients. These are two big pieces of burnout. Researchers have backed this up because they have found that longer hours and increased workloads are strongly linked to high burnout rates for physicians (especially in these specialties) (Shanafelt et al.).Gray 2

Studies support that almost half of neurosurgeons have symptoms of burnout, and neurologists have high rates worldwide as well (Zaed et al; Guo et al.). These numbers tell us that burnout is more than just an individual issue, and that there is something wrong with how things are run within the specialties. What doesn’t help is that there is a “stigma” around burnout that causes physicians to not seek help because they don’t want to seem weak, so this creates even worse burnout (Dyrbye et al.). This lets their feelings bottle up and get worse over time, making the burnout even worse.

Fixing/addressing burnout is going to take more than just telling physicians to “push through”. The hospitals and healthcare systems themselves need to make changes. This can be anything from reducing workload to offering mental health support. Research has shown that these structural changes are more effective than just assuming that the individuals are going to come up with their own solutions (West et al.). Another reason why the hospitals need to make changes is that burnout affects way more than just the physicians. Studies show that burnout causes more medical errors and has a bad impact on patient satisfaction, so the physicians’ well-being is impacting the hospital’s care quality (Shanafelt et al.). So, overall, if this problem is ignored, it is not only hurting the doctors but also the overall quality of healthcare.