It’s the new year. The new year brings renewed hopes, aspirations and resolutions. Alongside these resolutions can come some judgement, truth bombs and proclamations.
One thing I’ve noticed about proclamations is that they can be wrong. Particularly when they are applied to other people. For example, in the medical world, a lot of managers (and coaches) like to declare how broken doctors are.
Whether you are a doctor or not, perhaps you’ve been similarly labeled. If we’re going to label things, let’s try to apply an accurate label. Let’s take the ‘broken’ label and make an apt substitution from ‘broken’ to ‘burned out.’ Well, that’s a label I continually see misapplied.
I’ll give you a personal example. A number of years ago, I was repeatedly told I was burned out. We all try to please others, particularly people with great influence over us, like family, friends and managers. So I accepted I was a flawed, broken individual who was now “burned out.” Then I looked up the definition of burnout.
Guess what? I didn’t meet the criteria. Wanting to be objective, I looked at my 360 evals at work and patient feedback surveys. They didn’t show burnout, either. In fact, by all objective measures, I was not at all suffering from burnout.
Well, this was both good and bad. First, I felt vindicated. I knew viscerally I wasn’t burned out. I just didn’t have the words to describe my situation. And if I wanted to change my situation, I had to name it first. Once you can name your situation, you have much more power in changing the situation or how you respond to it.
I have witnessed time and again decisions made by power holders (money holders, insurance companies, corporations, managers) that have hurt physicians. Yet instead of labeling the situation correctly, the physician is labeled burnt out. Most of us put ‘burned out’ on the spectrum of ‘broken.’ And, truthfully, most of us are not broken.
We are human, though. Humans are designed to build strong connections, nurture relationships and take care of the people around them. And that is a great gift and capacity! My call to coaching applies to all of us, and it started as this, “Physicians want to practice great medicine, and they want to live authentically. That way they can take care of their families and show up for their communities.”
It’s time for you to do the same. Let’s work together. journeys@candidmedical.com. Happy 2026!
Cheers,
Joe Photo by Andrew Itaga on Unsplash
