Gimme a break with supporting burnout culture

There are many things HBO’s hit medical drama, The Pitt, does very well, and one of those things is capturing burnout.

It’s in the small details, such as the specific ways in which burned-out workers joke about needing a break. “Throw me in jail; I could use the vacation,” quips nurse Dana Evans (Katherine LaNasa).

It’s in the big ones, too, such as Dr. Robby’s (Noah Wyle) increasingly brusque treatment of his staff, the sabbatical he keeps threatening to take, how he feels the entire emergency department rests on his shoulders alone and how he takes great offence when it is suggested that running the ED is a two-doc job by Dr. Al-Hashimi (Sepideh Moafi), who will be running the show while he’s away.

Burnout in medicine is a well-known and well-documented problem. It’s gruelling and often thankless work. Ask any nurse who has been spit on, sworn at or threatened in the space of a shift. (The Pitt addresses this, too.)

So I was fascinated by the response to a recent episode in which med student Joy Kwon (played by a perfectly sardonic Irene Choi) decides to leave her shift on time. Not early. On time.

“You know 62 per cent of ED docs report suffering from burnout?” she asks Dr. Langdon (Patrick Ball) when he asks her why she’s leaving.

“Painfully aware,” he responds.

“So maybe all you lunatics need to learn how to set some boundaries, like me,” she says, and keeps walking.

What an absolute queen. I literally fist-pumped for her. Many people agree with me, based on how many Joy Appreciation memes, TikToks and think pieces have proliferated.

But I’ve also seen people criticize her for not being a team player and how she’ll probably get a bad performance review and hooo boy, that, to me, speaks volumes about what qualities we, as a culture, believe make for a “good worker” — regardless of profession.

Many of us were taught we have to pay our dues, that we should be the first to arrive and last to leave, that we should always go above, beyond and out of our way. That’s what passionate and dedicated people do. That’s what valued people do.

But passion and dedication are very easily exploited qualities across industries and, really, that’s what burnout is: a symptom of exploitation. Burnout comes from long hours and low wages and few breaks and little support. It’s systemic, not individual. It only feels individual because we perceive it as a capability problem — “I can’t handle it” — versus a capacity one.

But here’s the sneaky trick of it all: individuals who buy in end up upholding burnout culture by setting precedents that are bad for everyone, such as by taking on more responsibilities without more pay, or by never saying no, or by working on sick and vacation days, or by never even taking sick and vacation days. By not, as Joy points out, having boundaries.

That’s not dedication or passion. It’s fear.

Putting up a boundary isn’t easy, especially if you have little seniority, influence or clout — like a med student — which is what made Joy’s act of leaving on time (on time!) feel both radical and courageous, when leaving on time should be normal.

Workers have finite time and capacity, and we need to create working environments — regardless of how demanding or life and death they are — that empower them to protect those things.

The thing about most kinds of work is that it’s never actually done. There’s always more. You have to do what you need to do to be able to continue to do good work, not cosplay someone’s idea of a good worker. To quote one of my favourite lines from The Pitt’s predecessor, ER: “You know what they say: the longer you stay, the longer you stay.”

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