Burnout Summary: 26.11.2019

By Zahra Sayeed, Second Year Peer Navigator • 26 Nov 2019 • 0 comments

On 26^th November, Dr Asta Medisauskaite, a Research Fellow at UCL and an organisational psychologist, came to speak to us about burnout in doctors. She gave a very informative talk with shocking statistics about the prevalence of burnout amongst doctors as a result of the pressures they face at work. We also saw how burnout was linked to factors such as sleeping problems, anxiety, depression, binge-eating and more.

Dr Medisauskaite concluded the talk by introducing a board game that she had created and used as an intervention for doctors, and we had the chance to play the game in groups.

Study group playing a Working Stress boardgame — We would have liked to caption this saying ‘Zahra (centre) and friends getting competitive in Group Study on a Tuesday evening’, but really we were all rooting for each other quite kindly.

The game involved picking cards and answering questions related to stress and burnout and identifying common myths about these topics. There were also some cards that had helpful tips and advice for dealing with difficult times. Overall, the talk was very interesting and raised awareness about how common burnout is and the importance of talking about these issues.

Question card that concludes with: \ — One of the (perhaps bleaker) board game question cards