We Didn't Start the Fire — But We're Burning Out

Burnout doesn’t always announce itself with a crash. Sometimes it creeps in while you’re still achieving, still leading, still doing “all the right things” until you notice you’re dreading shifts, snapping at people you love, or feeling numb with patients. That’s where our conversation goes, with James Maskalyk, an emergency physician in downtown Toronto, the first wellness director in his division, and someone who has helped bring emergency medicine training and wellness thinking to Ethiopia.

We get honest about what high-stress healthcare work does to the body and mind: shift work, chronic cortisol, trauma exposure, PTSD, and the subtle slide into depersonalisation. We also talk about the system problem, not just the individual problem, when pay and performance are tied to throughput instead of the quality of care and the humanity of the clinician. Along the way, we share the moments that changed how we see “wellness,” including the realization that medicine is an act of empathy and you can’t pour from an empty cup.

Then we move into practical, real-world tools: taking meaningful time away (including month-long sabbaticals), creating space inside the ER for small moments of connection, building peer support, and doing debriefs that help teams process what they just lived through. We also discuss journaling, creative work, and therapy as ways to build vocabulary for what you’re carrying so you can make changes earlier, not years later. If this resonates, subscribe, share it with a colleague, and leave a review so more healthcare workers can find it.

To contact Dr. Grover: ammadeeasy@fastmail.com

Dr. Maskalyk's substack: https://jamesmaskalyk.substack.com/