EP 82 — Rob Orman, MD, on Identity, Work, and Process
Highlights
- The Allostatic Load: A New Perspective on Burnout
Key takeaways:
- The allostatic load is a term used to describe the stress that is put on the body when there is too much to do.
- The allostatic load can lead to burnout.
- Integrating trauma is important in order to avoid accumulating stress.
Transcript:
Speaker 1
Yeah, that I love that term, the allostatic load. I hadn't heard that before. And as you were talking, as you were reflecting on what I said, I said, yeah, when you get there, so you walk in the door and the charger says, hey, there's a cardiac arrest coming in in 30 seconds, boom, done on. And it's go time. And you're not feeling, oh, I'm so burnout. It's not sustainable. It's like, oh, yeah, this is my job. I'm doing it. But there are times on the shift when there's just, there's overwhelm. The patient load is just so much. A charger says on you. You've got a thousand points of data to interpret and all these discharge charges and all these things to do at once. There's only one on you. And that's kind of this allostatic load, I guess, on top of the allostatic load. But I kind of thought pop into my mind when you were talking about that moment. And actually, I could see in your facial inflection, your facial expression, as you're describing it, when you're talking about the drive into work, it was it was very heavy. And then when you talked into work, there was kind of a lightness of being. And we talk about, say, trauma stewardship, how do we integrate trauma, our own trauma, especially if you're doing emergency work, you see just horrible stuff. And you experienced that kind of trauma, and you also have your own difficulties. And there's a lot of different strategies to integrate that trauma rather than disintegrate. When you integrate it, it's like, okay, I'm going to be all right. When you disintegrate it, then it accumulates. The difference between stress, which is resolved after the event, and trauma, which you keep stuffing in there like a stuff sack. And two of the elements to integrating trauma going forward, and (Time 0:12:57)