A physician’s poem on burnout and end-of-life care
They tell us doctors
to practice self-care,
as if grief were a muscle
that loosens with stretching.
But no one teaches
how to set down
a conversation about dying
and pick up
the rhythm of living.
At the end of the work day,
the questions still echo,
How much time do I have?
What would you do, doc?
The charts are closed,
but the questions remain open.
Burnout does not arrive
as flames.
It seeps,
through the small cracks
between hope and reality,
between doing everything possible
and knowing we have …
A physician’s poem on burnout and end-of-life care
