Stress is not unique to medics
Editor - I've been trying to look for help on the post-burnout stage of a career and I keep finding doctors and medical people.1 I gave that career choice a wide berth in my youth, even though I had an easy way in, as I knew that it would do my psyche no good. So, eventually, after much self exploration and many trip-ups along the road, I settled on what seemed to be a settled, calm, stable, even-flow career: computer aided drafting, civil concentration. Shouldn't have been too bad, right?
Oh boy. It wasn't long, about six months actually spent in the workforce, when I learned why some people confuse heart attacks and acid indigestion. Wow! That hurts! My supervisor and I would go through a bottle of indigestion tablets the size of your head in a matter of a month. He burned out after two years in his CAD career and bought a house that was way out in the country, too far from paying jobs. I blamed the burnout on that particular company, and sought other companies to work for. I started to discover that CAD operators get wooed a lot, especially after I learned a second CAD format. I also started learning that there weren't very many CAD operators with more than three years' experience.
So what was going on? There are plenty of people trained to use CAD. Drafting, pre-CAD, generally employed people with 10, 20, and 30 years of experience. Lifelong careers were not uncommon. The "old timers" who made the switch from paper to CAD-people in their 30s and 40s-started dropping like flies from strokes and heart attacks. Now here I am, aged 41 with nine years of CAD experience. I've met only one other person who has more time on CAD than I have. He burned out five years ago.
A week and a half ago I gave it up. I've had enough. Now what? Why would a career choice that on the surface appears to offer a calm and steady path, a career whose predecessor-drafting technician-had a history of lifelong employment, suddenly become so stressful with the addition of a tool that is supposed to make the job easier? Has anyone looked at this? I know my career was not as vital as a medical career, but I'm seeing more 10 to 15 year burnouts in the medical field mentioned in the media, and have watched one to three year burnouts for CAD technicians. Why is this happening?
Kate Ackerly, CAD operator
Email: mccridhe@apol.net
studentBMJ 2000;08:303-346 September ISSN 0966-6494
- Bass D. Surfacing after burnout. studentBMJ 2000;8:86. (March.)
