Introduction: All neurosurgeons face a very real potential for burnout. A major difficulty in combatting burnout is recognizing the stressors that can precipitate it. These can become obscured as a neurosurgeon “normalizes” the “deviant” environment in which he or she works. Lately, we have enjoyed the presence of a cohort of undergraduate students imbedded in our service, observing the practice of neurosurgery. We have sampled the students’ experiences with, and responses to, a series of neurosurgical stressors. We feel that this generates a series of fresh, unjaded, observations about some of the challenges that may lead to burnout.
Methods: We have initiated a unique course at a major university to expose undergraduates to the neurosurgical world. This full-credit full-semester course involves weekly lectures on neurological disorders and their treatments, weekly 4-5 hour shadowing experiences in our operating rooms and ICU’s; and even night time on-call experiences with our team. We have asked our students to write a series of essays about psychosocial stressors they observe. Stressors addressed included: patient death, breaking bad news, patient tragedy, life balance, angry patients, and more.
Results: 40 students have thus far gone through this course. Stressor essays have been very open and rather fascinating. All reinforce the notion that the day to day experience of a busy neurosurgeon is at the extremes of psychosocial stressors. We will offer an amalgam of their comments in this presentation.
Conclusions: A neurosurgeon’s perception of what constitutes a normal life experience is severely distorted by their professional environment. Being around death, tragedy, mayhem becomes the norm. Recognizing the fact that surrounding events are major stressors that should be debriefed and defused becomes very difficult. We believe that the garnering of a fresh perspective on these stressors from bright uninitiated young adults will help stir consideration and discourse reference these stressors.
Patient Care: we are seeking to help prevent or ameliorate burnout in neurosurgeons. burnout leads to diminished quality of care and greater rates of medical errors. by limiting provider burnout, we help improve patient care
Learning Objectives: to better understand the psychosocial stressors faced by neurosurgeons that may contribute to burnout