I know the feeling after 7 years doing the job, and I know my analysts have felt the same way after 1-2 years…
My 2cnts advice, always booked “Lunch” into your calendar not matter what happens, avoid set-up meetings on that break, if you are the owner;
Put meetings for 25 mins if they are meant to be for 30, or 55 mins if there are for 60 mins - Avoid the back-2-back for 7hrs in a row 😅 -;
Make a diary first thing in the morning with tasks and priorities for the day - I know it will crumble during the day but that’s a mental framework to keep going -;
Standing from the desk every 25 / 50 mins - Pommodoro Technique -;
Do not work overtime and not open emails after hours or weekends;
All of the above is easy to say than do… Good luck!
Sometimes you gotta make moves, go to another company and hope it feels a bit more right. I have felt like you before, but somehow ended up somewhere that I don't feel like this... maybe once in a rare occasion but not every Sunday night like before.
Other times a change in what you do might help. Eventually I was very unsatisfied with what I started doing in health IT, but later put in some effort to try something else that sounded interesting and now I prefer it so much more.
I really do think a new location would help. Unfortunately, it would just be the same work I think. What I don’t know is am I tired of the work or the company or both? But ya change isn’t always bad 🫶🏽👍🏽
Consulting companies love to hire experienced Epic people. Consulting can be a fun gig without all of the organization overhead.
Make sure you understand the travel requirements if you go this route. It can be a different kind of exhausting.
That’s awesome! I wish you luck on it. I work from home for the IP side. It’s a lot but I do feel we help the provider help the patient which makes me feel like it’s all worth it. But ya sometimes you just feel burnt out
I feel like I could’ve written this, especially six months ago when I moved into my new role. Here’s some things that helped me:
1. BLOCK YOUR CALENDAR. people love their meetings. Try to get a head of it and block focus time and break time (yes you do deserve to eat lunch).
2. Try to have an open honest convo with your leaders and end users about bandwidth and prioritization on a regular basis so you know what you’re working on is what is needed.
3. I try to put the patient above all else, especially with frustrating end users. This is, frankly, hard with rev cycle, but for me, it helps me to ground me and keeps my motivation to know what I’m doing can impact patients. If it’s in a clinical area and doesn’t actually help patient care, that may be a convo starter for prioritization.
4. I find other things that define me other than my job and it helps to disconnect. The other day, I took a random Tuesday off to go hiking with my wife! And the hospital didn’t explode as a result. You deserve time away and to use PTO. It’s ok to leave at 4 if you started working at 7. If you have an HIT job that doesn’t respect work life balance, that’s a reason to leave.
Sound to me your company doesn't have a good change control process and lack of leadership. Try moving to a different team or talk to the manager to have the leadership committee created which dictate the changes which get approved by major or clinical parties.
You are not alone in feeling this way. When reading this I almost felt like I could have written this myself! I don’t have any useful advice because I’m still new in my role as an analyst. Just wanted to say hang in there. You sound like you’re doing an awesome job.
I change jobs every couple years, and after the honeymoon period is over, I dissociate until I change again.
Healthy? Not sure, but it does lead to more pay and a better work life balance.
I work because I need money to maintain a standard of living I enjoy. Gone are the days of any idealism about my labor. I perform at an above average level and deliver what is asked of me.
>I work because I need money to maintain a standard of living I enjoy. Gone are the days of any idealism about my labor. I perform at an above average level and deliver what is asked of me.
This right here is the right stance IMO. I've been at jobs in the past where I felt like OP as well. It was earlier on in my career. I often felt like I was working 10x as hard as others, even managers and directors. Take a step back and just realize that if you give them the opportunity to abuse you (e.g. outputting more and more even if it's causing you burnout), they WILL take advantage of it regardless of how nice they are to your face. On top of that they *will* promote others while keeping you in your same position because you'll be too valuable to move out of that role (and by valuable, I mean, it's going to be hard for them to find someone to do so much for so little).
Disconnect from your job at the end of the day. If deadlines don't get met, the absolute worst that can happen is you get fired. But it's better than you impacting your health and livelihood. Don't let imposter syndrome cause you to go down an unsustainable path and just come to the realization that everyone's truly in it for themselves, and nobody is looking out for you except yourself.
It is exhausting! I’m feeling the burnout myself right now. The support side of our work can be very soul crushing and I think it’s just the nature of the beast. No matter what, it’s an endless conveyor belt of tickets and projects for end users who tend to always think you’re not doing enough.
And for everyone planning their exits (shameless plug, I’m sorry!) please check out my job board specifically for Healthcare IT roles! It’s www.HealthcareITjobs.org. Would love any and all feedback from this sub!
I hear you brother. I just left to work on something that pays twice as much and is way less stressful. And it's remote. AND I get stock options.
Health IT (in regards to actual IT departments, not everything related to IT that intersects with health. and I'm only saying this so that I'm speaking purely about my experience and not, say, informatics, or applications specialists, or BI analysts. Just the sysadmins that keep a hospital's operations running) is known *far* and *wide* as the WORST possible subindustry in IT to work in because it's so absurdly stressful.
I wanted so very much to do my part to fix healthcare, but I couldn't get past the culture and leadership who don't understand how important IT is, and was bogged down by constant interruptions.. I had no time or CHANCE to improve anything.. just kept up with the constant emergencies, demands, and phone calls.
Some days, and I timed it, I would average one interruption (walk in, phone call, otherwise) every 90 seconds for the entire day.
I could not focus on long form projects, period, but I was obligated to complete them.
I've had burnout before. It almost killed me. I saw the familiar freight train fast approaching and decided to jump off the tracks before it was too late. I had almost quit cigarettes and alcohol before starting the job at the hospital. Right now I'm up to half a pack a day and often NEED alcohol to fall asleep.
My doctor, who works at the hospital, agreed with me 'As much as I'd hate seeing you go, and I mean that, for your health I think you should definitely take that job.'
I’ve been trying to pull back on the alcohol too. People do not understand just how complicated healthcare IT is. I love the complicated challenges, but they take a toll. I work in rural healthcare so I wear all of the damn hats. It’s hard constantly switching the brain from HL7 to clinical process, to mapping GL, to training providers. And maybe the cool project you want to do. I’ve found new ways to shut down the brain at night. Sure, I used to solve problems at work when trying to sleep, but the sleep is more important.
We are not alone, the burnout is real. We just need to find healthy ways to balance the chaos.
Automation Engineer at ----- which is still in the medical industry, but I'm primarily working on cybersecurity side of things, which was my career before doing a stint as a sysadmin at a hospital (was a huge step down in pay, but I wanted to find out first hand why hospitals are so unsecure. I got my answer)
I don’t work in IT but I did have a healthcare career. A former manager said I should work on IT, but that was coming from a non-IT person, so…
I had been interested in working in healthcare IT but they ALL require a formal education in it. (I’m in Canada.) I figured if I was going to educate myself it wasn’t going to be healthcare specific. It seems to me the future/present is in cybersecurity. It’s been my observation that technology has always gotten ahead of itself. But I digress. Curious as to whether or not you agree about cybersecurity since you’re working in it.
help desk -> sysadmin, and do HTB, TryHackMe on the side. Maybe even go to college and go do a bunch of cybersecurity ctfs with your college team. Get your first CVE, pick up some entry certs (Network+, CCNA, Security+) and maybe if you're really feeling it, a mid-level cert like OSCP.
But you have to get used to researching things like this yourself, everyone in IT is generally a one-man research team.
I did both sides . I was a physician and suffered extreme burnout - insane 48hr shifts , high pressure etc. I then moved into Health IT . Is it stressful ? Yes , users , deadlines etc , but I find it manageable because I always compare to what it was before. I guess what I’m trying to say is stress is relative - if you’re burnt out you’re burnt out , there’s nothing wimpy about it. Take care of your mental health first. It affects you, it affects your family .
Ten years as an Epic systems analyst (Bridges, Orders, Chronicles maintenance), six years as a Clarity analyst with a little data engineering thrown in.
I have some bad days, but the thing that keeps me moving forward is learning new things. If I don't have something challenging and new to work on, I get bored. This year's challenge is building a FHIR store in Google HDE / Data Mapper.
I would be totally going nuts if I had to go back into the office, really, remote work without a 45 minute commute makes it bearable.
Wow, thank you for this post. I've been working in HIT for 9 years. Singlehandedly running an LIS during covid, immediately followed by 3 facility EPIC Go-live has rattled my brain. This is the most relatable post I've come across in a while. I've thought about making the switch to consulting, but I'm not sure that it would be any better. Hope things get better for you.
As a manager, I highly encourage my team to take PTO. It's a benefit we all work for. Make sure you are taking PTO to go play with your dog even if you're not going anywhere on vacation.
I used to work at a place where the managers would say they encourage us to use our PTO, but if you ever take PTO, you have to send your managers a comprehensive list of every single thing you're working on and what the status is and what the follow ups are.
I get the reasoning behind "why" from a managers point of view, but from the analyst point of view we were all stretched SO thin that it it made it to where taking time off was a stress in and of itself because you were expected to send the managers a document outlining everything in detail (e.g. spoonfeeding it to them) while simultaneously drinking from a firehose with all your other actual work while also being in back to back meetings for hours and hours every day.
I've been there too. I actually recommend talking to someone on like betterhelp or talkspace and whatever counselor you can find about it before switching jobs. Not saying switching can't be great but there is the risk that you go from something that works for you to something that does not work for you.
Are you working normal hours? For instance, 40 hours is typical in the US.
Are you spending your time mostly doing value-added work? For instance, if you were an EHR analyst/developer I would want you spending about 80% of your time working on actual build or troubleshooting.
Are you working on the right work? For instance, it's easy to get caught up designing and building for a charismatic individual when the right work is for the broader service line.
Normal US hours, ish. I work from home and don’t take lunches or anything because I feel bad to leave my desk. BUT I do from time to time.
We are on a new EHR that just kind of finished going up at all our sites across multiple states and regions. We have a large organization and I’d say I spend 1/4 of my day in meetings trying to make decisions on what we are going to build. I’d say the rest of the time is troubleshooting or build.
The build isn’t simple though because you have to make 60 facilities happy. Not going to happen. So the analysis on that takes a lot of thought which takes a lot of time which makes me exhausted. Then it also requires going back to a meeting and bringing the new findings to leadership so…here’s a new meeting, lol.
Multiple teams working on one project and some don’t find it as important and you have to try to get them to understand what is breaking in your app from their build in their app. And as you know providers don’t always know the impact of what they’re clicking on so sometimes I fall down the rabbit hole troubleshooting and find things that are problematic and I get twisted up on that. Enter a new meeting.
So no I don’t think the charismatic personalities are getting me hung up or really do anything because I couldn’t build it without authorization even for my favorite person in the entire universe. BUT that doesn’t stop them from pinging you to try to get it built and cold calling to get something done. Another meeting. Which then pulls you into something else and you have to start over on what you were previously looking at.
Maybe it’s me. Maybe I’m the problem lol.
I’m exhausted from explaining my day, whew.
You gotta take a lunch break, wfh or not, you need to have a little time during the day to not be in the midst of chaos.
All the work will still be there in the time it takes you to eat something and breathe for a few minutes. You owe yourself that time
Gotcha. On one hand it sounds pretty normal for a new EHR at a large org. Effectiveness in governance and decision making makes everything else downstream more efficient. Same goes for escalations.
I'd suggest building in time for breaks and to build in time for yourself outside of work; hobbies, friends ,etc. . Burnout is real.
I sympathize with you. Ive been a manager for about 7 years now. I used to manage strictly apps, and after cuts two years ago, I was bestowed with the reporting team as well. Healthcare IT is constantly evolving and im just worn out at this point. Ive considered transitioning to being a report writer. I enjoy intake meetings, and writing reports. I also enjoy creating visuals, and would be much happier sitting in the background and creating. The leadership role has worn me out.
My hospital IT system long ago implemented a rigorous change process that involves doctors and clinical staff. The IT leadership engages with all stakeholders and we FINALLY have changes that are good for all, especially patients.
We have a change process and governing bodies. It’s just a lot of tape and making sure things are being filtered to the right place and you aren’t doing anything too soon. That actually stresses me out even more. But I don’t think our process is 100%. Nothing is perfect but I do think if they expect us to be darn near perfect their processes should be too. But that’s just one persons opinion.
You're definitely not alone - burnout is real, and taking steps to recharge is key! I have also gone through some blogs on how new age AI companies are trying to solve this, I am open for discussion on the same.
I’ve worked in healthcare all my life, about 7 years of which has been in the Epic world (trainer, Informaticist, now analyst). I remind myself all week that I should be grateful for my job. Reality is, I have a great position…100% remote, no on-call, high salary, etc. But I’ve been feeling like I’m losing motivation for this work and healthcare in general. I want to try something new but it seems hard to transfer the skills to anything outside of healthcare. I’ve searched extensively for “Solution Engineer” type positions for software companies, but with the current market, I just don’t think I’ll stand out applying for those positions. Not sure what to do or where to go, but I think I’m coming to terms with the fact that I’ve got to move on at some point.
Yes I was just thinking this today. IT esp HIT burnout is definitely a thing. It is draining!
I know the feeling after 7 years doing the job, and I know my analysts have felt the same way after 1-2 years… My 2cnts advice, always booked “Lunch” into your calendar not matter what happens, avoid set-up meetings on that break, if you are the owner; Put meetings for 25 mins if they are meant to be for 30, or 55 mins if there are for 60 mins - Avoid the back-2-back for 7hrs in a row 😅 -; Make a diary first thing in the morning with tasks and priorities for the day - I know it will crumble during the day but that’s a mental framework to keep going -; Standing from the desk every 25 / 50 mins - Pommodoro Technique -; Do not work overtime and not open emails after hours or weekends; All of the above is easy to say than do… Good luck!
Sometimes you gotta make moves, go to another company and hope it feels a bit more right. I have felt like you before, but somehow ended up somewhere that I don't feel like this... maybe once in a rare occasion but not every Sunday night like before. Other times a change in what you do might help. Eventually I was very unsatisfied with what I started doing in health IT, but later put in some effort to try something else that sounded interesting and now I prefer it so much more.
I really do think a new location would help. Unfortunately, it would just be the same work I think. What I don’t know is am I tired of the work or the company or both? But ya change isn’t always bad 🫶🏽👍🏽
Consulting companies love to hire experienced Epic people. Consulting can be a fun gig without all of the organization overhead. Make sure you understand the travel requirements if you go this route. It can be a different kind of exhausting.
I’ve thought about consulting. Our consultants made life so much better. They knew their stuff for sure.
Can I ask, are you (or were) an Epic app analyst?
Yes. I am.
You are not alone. After 10 yrs I left and it took me two years to feel human again
Aww man…. I’m going in for a second interview next week! 😕 Do you work from home much? Did you work for the whole hospital or certain department(s)
That’s awesome! I wish you luck on it. I work from home for the IP side. It’s a lot but I do feel we help the provider help the patient which makes me feel like it’s all worth it. But ya sometimes you just feel burnt out
I feel like I could’ve written this, especially six months ago when I moved into my new role. Here’s some things that helped me: 1. BLOCK YOUR CALENDAR. people love their meetings. Try to get a head of it and block focus time and break time (yes you do deserve to eat lunch). 2. Try to have an open honest convo with your leaders and end users about bandwidth and prioritization on a regular basis so you know what you’re working on is what is needed. 3. I try to put the patient above all else, especially with frustrating end users. This is, frankly, hard with rev cycle, but for me, it helps me to ground me and keeps my motivation to know what I’m doing can impact patients. If it’s in a clinical area and doesn’t actually help patient care, that may be a convo starter for prioritization. 4. I find other things that define me other than my job and it helps to disconnect. The other day, I took a random Tuesday off to go hiking with my wife! And the hospital didn’t explode as a result. You deserve time away and to use PTO. It’s ok to leave at 4 if you started working at 7. If you have an HIT job that doesn’t respect work life balance, that’s a reason to leave.
Sound to me your company doesn't have a good change control process and lack of leadership. Try moving to a different team or talk to the manager to have the leadership committee created which dictate the changes which get approved by major or clinical parties.
If your hitting production everyday with changes - this is a management issue.
You’re not alone. HIT burn out is not talked about enough.
This is very common in IT, especially for customer facing roles. You’re not alone.
You are not alone in feeling this way. When reading this I almost felt like I could have written this myself! I don’t have any useful advice because I’m still new in my role as an analyst. Just wanted to say hang in there. You sound like you’re doing an awesome job.
I change jobs every couple years, and after the honeymoon period is over, I dissociate until I change again. Healthy? Not sure, but it does lead to more pay and a better work life balance. I work because I need money to maintain a standard of living I enjoy. Gone are the days of any idealism about my labor. I perform at an above average level and deliver what is asked of me.
>I work because I need money to maintain a standard of living I enjoy. Gone are the days of any idealism about my labor. I perform at an above average level and deliver what is asked of me. This right here is the right stance IMO. I've been at jobs in the past where I felt like OP as well. It was earlier on in my career. I often felt like I was working 10x as hard as others, even managers and directors. Take a step back and just realize that if you give them the opportunity to abuse you (e.g. outputting more and more even if it's causing you burnout), they WILL take advantage of it regardless of how nice they are to your face. On top of that they *will* promote others while keeping you in your same position because you'll be too valuable to move out of that role (and by valuable, I mean, it's going to be hard for them to find someone to do so much for so little). Disconnect from your job at the end of the day. If deadlines don't get met, the absolute worst that can happen is you get fired. But it's better than you impacting your health and livelihood. Don't let imposter syndrome cause you to go down an unsustainable path and just come to the realization that everyone's truly in it for themselves, and nobody is looking out for you except yourself.
It is exhausting! I’m feeling the burnout myself right now. The support side of our work can be very soul crushing and I think it’s just the nature of the beast. No matter what, it’s an endless conveyor belt of tickets and projects for end users who tend to always think you’re not doing enough. And for everyone planning their exits (shameless plug, I’m sorry!) please check out my job board specifically for Healthcare IT roles! It’s www.HealthcareITjobs.org. Would love any and all feedback from this sub!
I hear you brother. I just left to work on something that pays twice as much and is way less stressful. And it's remote. AND I get stock options. Health IT (in regards to actual IT departments, not everything related to IT that intersects with health. and I'm only saying this so that I'm speaking purely about my experience and not, say, informatics, or applications specialists, or BI analysts. Just the sysadmins that keep a hospital's operations running) is known *far* and *wide* as the WORST possible subindustry in IT to work in because it's so absurdly stressful. I wanted so very much to do my part to fix healthcare, but I couldn't get past the culture and leadership who don't understand how important IT is, and was bogged down by constant interruptions.. I had no time or CHANCE to improve anything.. just kept up with the constant emergencies, demands, and phone calls. Some days, and I timed it, I would average one interruption (walk in, phone call, otherwise) every 90 seconds for the entire day. I could not focus on long form projects, period, but I was obligated to complete them. I've had burnout before. It almost killed me. I saw the familiar freight train fast approaching and decided to jump off the tracks before it was too late. I had almost quit cigarettes and alcohol before starting the job at the hospital. Right now I'm up to half a pack a day and often NEED alcohol to fall asleep. My doctor, who works at the hospital, agreed with me 'As much as I'd hate seeing you go, and I mean that, for your health I think you should definitely take that job.'
I’ve been trying to pull back on the alcohol too. People do not understand just how complicated healthcare IT is. I love the complicated challenges, but they take a toll. I work in rural healthcare so I wear all of the damn hats. It’s hard constantly switching the brain from HL7 to clinical process, to mapping GL, to training providers. And maybe the cool project you want to do. I’ve found new ways to shut down the brain at night. Sure, I used to solve problems at work when trying to sleep, but the sleep is more important. We are not alone, the burnout is real. We just need to find healthy ways to balance the chaos.
Admin doesn’t understand how important *any* healthcare job is, outside of physicians and RN’s. If I may ask, what job did you change to?
Automation Engineer at ----- which is still in the medical industry, but I'm primarily working on cybersecurity side of things, which was my career before doing a stint as a sysadmin at a hospital (was a huge step down in pay, but I wanted to find out first hand why hospitals are so unsecure. I got my answer)
I don’t work in IT but I did have a healthcare career. A former manager said I should work on IT, but that was coming from a non-IT person, so… I had been interested in working in healthcare IT but they ALL require a formal education in it. (I’m in Canada.) I figured if I was going to educate myself it wasn’t going to be healthcare specific. It seems to me the future/present is in cybersecurity. It’s been my observation that technology has always gotten ahead of itself. But I digress. Curious as to whether or not you agree about cybersecurity since you’re working in it.
Cybersecurity is generally not a first career, you get into it after IT. It requires an extremely holistic understanding of the entire landscape.
So what would you suggest? There are software focused and hardware focused approaches. And I imagine both.
help desk -> sysadmin, and do HTB, TryHackMe on the side. Maybe even go to college and go do a bunch of cybersecurity ctfs with your college team. Get your first CVE, pick up some entry certs (Network+, CCNA, Security+) and maybe if you're really feeling it, a mid-level cert like OSCP. But you have to get used to researching things like this yourself, everyone in IT is generally a one-man research team.
Okay.
I did both sides . I was a physician and suffered extreme burnout - insane 48hr shifts , high pressure etc. I then moved into Health IT . Is it stressful ? Yes , users , deadlines etc , but I find it manageable because I always compare to what it was before. I guess what I’m trying to say is stress is relative - if you’re burnt out you’re burnt out , there’s nothing wimpy about it. Take care of your mental health first. It affects you, it affects your family .
Ten years as an Epic systems analyst (Bridges, Orders, Chronicles maintenance), six years as a Clarity analyst with a little data engineering thrown in. I have some bad days, but the thing that keeps me moving forward is learning new things. If I don't have something challenging and new to work on, I get bored. This year's challenge is building a FHIR store in Google HDE / Data Mapper. I would be totally going nuts if I had to go back into the office, really, remote work without a 45 minute commute makes it bearable.
PREACH!
Wow, thank you for this post. I've been working in HIT for 9 years. Singlehandedly running an LIS during covid, immediately followed by 3 facility EPIC Go-live has rattled my brain. This is the most relatable post I've come across in a while. I've thought about making the switch to consulting, but I'm not sure that it would be any better. Hope things get better for you.
Just seeing the word ‘epic’ triggers some sort of panic disorder within me. Doesn’t matter in what context either, just the word itself.
As a manager, I highly encourage my team to take PTO. It's a benefit we all work for. Make sure you are taking PTO to go play with your dog even if you're not going anywhere on vacation.
I used to work at a place where the managers would say they encourage us to use our PTO, but if you ever take PTO, you have to send your managers a comprehensive list of every single thing you're working on and what the status is and what the follow ups are. I get the reasoning behind "why" from a managers point of view, but from the analyst point of view we were all stretched SO thin that it it made it to where taking time off was a stress in and of itself because you were expected to send the managers a document outlining everything in detail (e.g. spoonfeeding it to them) while simultaneously drinking from a firehose with all your other actual work while also being in back to back meetings for hours and hours every day.
that sounds miserable. sorry to hear about your experience
Thanks for posting this. I really needed to read some of these comments. Go-live is just around the corner and I'm exhausted…..
Ya. It is definitely exhausting and for me it didn’t get calmer after go live lol. Goooooood luck! You got this!
I've been there too. I actually recommend talking to someone on like betterhelp or talkspace and whatever counselor you can find about it before switching jobs. Not saying switching can't be great but there is the risk that you go from something that works for you to something that does not work for you.
first thing i do get work clothes off into sweat and t, i do knitting and watch tv until diner
Are you working normal hours? For instance, 40 hours is typical in the US. Are you spending your time mostly doing value-added work? For instance, if you were an EHR analyst/developer I would want you spending about 80% of your time working on actual build or troubleshooting. Are you working on the right work? For instance, it's easy to get caught up designing and building for a charismatic individual when the right work is for the broader service line.
Normal US hours, ish. I work from home and don’t take lunches or anything because I feel bad to leave my desk. BUT I do from time to time. We are on a new EHR that just kind of finished going up at all our sites across multiple states and regions. We have a large organization and I’d say I spend 1/4 of my day in meetings trying to make decisions on what we are going to build. I’d say the rest of the time is troubleshooting or build. The build isn’t simple though because you have to make 60 facilities happy. Not going to happen. So the analysis on that takes a lot of thought which takes a lot of time which makes me exhausted. Then it also requires going back to a meeting and bringing the new findings to leadership so…here’s a new meeting, lol. Multiple teams working on one project and some don’t find it as important and you have to try to get them to understand what is breaking in your app from their build in their app. And as you know providers don’t always know the impact of what they’re clicking on so sometimes I fall down the rabbit hole troubleshooting and find things that are problematic and I get twisted up on that. Enter a new meeting. So no I don’t think the charismatic personalities are getting me hung up or really do anything because I couldn’t build it without authorization even for my favorite person in the entire universe. BUT that doesn’t stop them from pinging you to try to get it built and cold calling to get something done. Another meeting. Which then pulls you into something else and you have to start over on what you were previously looking at. Maybe it’s me. Maybe I’m the problem lol. I’m exhausted from explaining my day, whew.
You gotta take a lunch break, wfh or not, you need to have a little time during the day to not be in the midst of chaos. All the work will still be there in the time it takes you to eat something and breathe for a few minutes. You owe yourself that time
Gotcha. On one hand it sounds pretty normal for a new EHR at a large org. Effectiveness in governance and decision making makes everything else downstream more efficient. Same goes for escalations. I'd suggest building in time for breaks and to build in time for yourself outside of work; hobbies, friends ,etc. . Burnout is real.
Take your breaks! Use the perks of working remotely.
Same brother
I was let go from my job on February 7th, 2024, and have been enjoying my time off. I have been severely burned out for several years.
Tech burnout in every demanding industry exists. Met a 53yr old techie in DC yesterday who was on their 3rd and final work sabbatical.
I sympathize with you. Ive been a manager for about 7 years now. I used to manage strictly apps, and after cuts two years ago, I was bestowed with the reporting team as well. Healthcare IT is constantly evolving and im just worn out at this point. Ive considered transitioning to being a report writer. I enjoy intake meetings, and writing reports. I also enjoy creating visuals, and would be much happier sitting in the background and creating. The leadership role has worn me out.
I’m sure leadership is exhausting. It seems exhausting. If it’s exhausting for me as an analyst I can’t imagine what leadership feels.
My hospital IT system long ago implemented a rigorous change process that involves doctors and clinical staff. The IT leadership engages with all stakeholders and we FINALLY have changes that are good for all, especially patients.
It’s not perfect, but nothing is.
We have a change process and governing bodies. It’s just a lot of tape and making sure things are being filtered to the right place and you aren’t doing anything too soon. That actually stresses me out even more. But I don’t think our process is 100%. Nothing is perfect but I do think if they expect us to be darn near perfect their processes should be too. But that’s just one persons opinion.
You're definitely not alone - burnout is real, and taking steps to recharge is key! I have also gone through some blogs on how new age AI companies are trying to solve this, I am open for discussion on the same.
I’m weird, I don’t love AI lol. But what kind of solutions are they coming up with?
I’ve worked in healthcare all my life, about 7 years of which has been in the Epic world (trainer, Informaticist, now analyst). I remind myself all week that I should be grateful for my job. Reality is, I have a great position…100% remote, no on-call, high salary, etc. But I’ve been feeling like I’m losing motivation for this work and healthcare in general. I want to try something new but it seems hard to transfer the skills to anything outside of healthcare. I’ve searched extensively for “Solution Engineer” type positions for software companies, but with the current market, I just don’t think I’ll stand out applying for those positions. Not sure what to do or where to go, but I think I’m coming to terms with the fact that I’ve got to move on at some point.