Healers Need Healing, Too
When flight attendants deliver safety instructions, they remind us of the need to put on our own oxygen masks first before we try to assist others.
As health-care professionals, our natural tendency is to focus on the well-being of others; that’s what we’ve been trained to do. We give our patients good advice regarding their physical and mental health, yet the environments we work in are not always conducive to our own well-being. The result can be burnout, which is associated with depression, which increases the risk for suicide. In fact, physicians have a higher suicide rate than the general population.