Chronicle 2020

PROFILES

Taking care of ourselves, to take care of others

SHELLY DEV 1994 By Alexandra Brickman 2010

Burnout is felt in most professions, but not always recognized, let alone understood. Dr. Shelly Dev has been addressing burnout in the medical community by sharing her story as an intensive care doctor at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre – a position she has had since 2006. Shelly always knew she wanted to pursue medicine. In Grade 9, her first year at Havergal, she resolved to get into medical school. Later, as she worked her way through medical school and a residency in internal medicine, Shelly found her calling in intensive care. “Since I don’t come from a family of physicians, I didn’t know much about medicine, but I had always thought of it as a noble profession. Deciding to do intensive care was a surprise for me because I didn’t expect to enjoy or excel at something so acute, stressful and emotionally difficult. It was the one place I couldn’t hide. I had to act, to make decisions, to be responsible in the moment. I liked being pushed like that, being forced to confront things I didn’t know and learn from them.” A few years ago, Shelly was invited by a group of internal medicine residents to speak about wellness at a weekend retreat. In preparing, Shelly sat down to reflect on her life and career – in particular, her first years out of training, during which time she had two children and lost her father to a terminal cancer. In her speech, Shelly opened up about her experience in therapy, which helped her reckon with painful moments in her medical training. “When I was a resident, I became this person that I didn’t even recognize. You suppress

difficult or confusing experiences in the name of ‘professionalism.’ There’s a tacit belief in the medical world that in order to be good at that job, you have to numb your own feelings to be able to take care of your patients. It was only after I spent time in therapy that I realized what my life in medicine meant for me as a human being – what I gave away and what I now needed to reclaim about myself.” Shelly’s speech was adapted into an essay titled How Therapy Revealed the Ills of Residency , which was published on the University of Toronto Faculty of Medicine website and emailed to all of its alumni. Shelly says hundreds of people contacted her, telling her how much her words resonated with them. “I was so stunned by how pervasive this sense of private struggle was. Our profession is defined by compassion, grounded in its ability to care for people – but we only apply that to our patients, we don’t always apply it to each other or ourselves.” When COVID-19 struck last spring, Shelly saw the mental health crisis in the medical community hit an entirely new level. She also saw parallels between the pandemic and physician burnout. “The barrier to appreciating the gravity of burnout is the seeming invisibility of the affliction. With the physical devastation brought by the pandemic, that need for caring for ourselves as providers became more tangible. It is now clearer than ever that we must value our mental and physical health as though our lives depend on it, because they do. We cannot look after these incredibly unwell patients unless we are also well and able to do our work.”

PHOTO: NIAMH BARRY 2009

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