{"title":"Serving Refugees, Rediscovering Medicine, and Recovering from Burnout.","authors":"Malwina Huzarska","doi":"10.1007/s10912-024-09922-5","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>In the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, I found myself struggling with debilitating professional burnout as a physician assistant (PA) in emergency medicine. Despite initial fears and uncertainties, I chose to volunteer at a refugee center in Wroclaw, Poland, where I provided medical care to Ukrainian war victims. This experience proved to be a transformative journey, reigniting my passion for patient-centered care and addressing my burnout. Establishing a profound connection between medical care and humanity reminded me of the reasons I entered the medical profession. Practicing medicine in a refugee center, free from the constraints of the healthcare business model, allowed me to reconnect with the core values of my profession. This experience underscored the therapeutic potential of volunteering as a means to combat professional burnout and fostered a renewed commitment to patient care upon my return home. In an era where clinician burnout is increasingly prevalent, this narrative explores the importance of rekindling one's passion for medicine by returning to its fundamental purpose: compassionate, patient-centered care.</p>","PeriodicalId":45518,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Medical Humanities","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.2000,"publicationDate":"2024-12-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Journal of Medical Humanities","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s10912-024-09922-5","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"0","JCRName":"HUMANITIES, MULTIDISCIPLINARY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
In the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, I found myself struggling with debilitating professional burnout as a physician assistant (PA) in emergency medicine. Despite initial fears and uncertainties, I chose to volunteer at a refugee center in Wroclaw, Poland, where I provided medical care to Ukrainian war victims. This experience proved to be a transformative journey, reigniting my passion for patient-centered care and addressing my burnout. Establishing a profound connection between medical care and humanity reminded me of the reasons I entered the medical profession. Practicing medicine in a refugee center, free from the constraints of the healthcare business model, allowed me to reconnect with the core values of my profession. This experience underscored the therapeutic potential of volunteering as a means to combat professional burnout and fostered a renewed commitment to patient care upon my return home. In an era where clinician burnout is increasingly prevalent, this narrative explores the importance of rekindling one's passion for medicine by returning to its fundamental purpose: compassionate, patient-centered care.
期刊介绍:
Journal of Medical Humanities publishes original papers that reflect its enlarged focus on interdisciplinary inquiry in medicine and medical education. Such inquiry can emerge in the following ways: (1) from the medical humanities, which includes literature, history, philosophy, and bioethics as well as those areas of the social and behavioral sciences that have strong humanistic traditions; (2) from cultural studies, a multidisciplinary activity involving the humanities; women''s, African-American, and other critical studies; media studies and popular culture; and sociology and anthropology, which can be used to examine medical institutions, practice and education with a special focus on relations of power; and (3) from pedagogical perspectives that elucidate what and how knowledge is made and valued in medicine, how that knowledge is expressed and transmitted, and the ideological basis of medical education.