Healing with Heart from Moss Communications

Avoiding Burnout

Some people may summarize the reason there is so much difficulty finding and keeping good people in health care, with the word “Burnout.” Healing with Heart: Inspirations for Health Care Professionals, the latest book published by Moss Communications, is an antidote to the stresses and sense of meaninglessness that can arise from the relentless activity and demands place on health care professionals.

Healing with Heart is a gift-quality, portable book filled with inspirations and reminders of the value and sacredness of the work we do. The following is an excerpt from Healing With Heart that addresses the critical issue of burnout among health care professionals.

In health care, hardly a day passes that we could call “normal.” In our line of work, the people we deal with on a daily basis come to us with all kinds of conditions, some severe and some moderate. Combine that with ever changing technology, and we have a thoroughly unpredictable situation— every day. For some of us, this unpredictability is part of the challenge and appeal that draws us into the field.

Some say that one reason so many health care professionals become burned out is that they have to numb themselves to the intensity of life about them simply to survive. This shield is a way to avoid feeling the suffering of others. Anyone in a field that deals with human misery—like welfare workers, homicide investigators or firefighters—are confronted by the rawness of life in a way that the rest of the population is not. They, like us, have to make a choice about how much of the suffering of others to let in and how much to keep at bay. They have to keep out enough to avoid a meltdown and yet not so much that they lose their humanity. For self-preservation alone, they have to maintain some sense of balance because they’re in this for the long run.

Everyone handles this problem differently…