There is no one-size-fits-all rem­e­dy to avoid­ing burnout, it all de­pends on the per­son. Be­ing a health­care pro­fes­sion­al usu­al­ly means that you give your heart and soul to your job and the peo­ple you en­counter along the way.

Fac­ing life or death is­sues day in and day out takes its toll on the strongest of peo­ple. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, with long hours, a de­mand­ing work­load and emo­tion­al drain, the end of some days may seem too far away. By the time it’s over, you have noth­ing left to give. Burnout in the work­place is ex­treme­ly preva­lent in this field, and hav­ing to put on a brave face in the pres­ence of pa­tients while try­ing to keep your­self to­geth­er be­comes near im­pos­si­ble.

Here are a few warn­ing signs to look out for when you think you may be ex­pe­ri­enc­ing burnout:

Chron­ic low en­er­gy and ex­haus­tion

Feels of in­ef­fi­ca­cy

Get­ting sick fre­quent­ly

Not re­lax­ing or tak­ing time to recharge

Feel­ing dis­en­gaged

If you ex­pe­ri­ence any of the feel­ings above, it’s time to talk to some­one about it. Burnout is be­com­ing one of the biggest oc­cu­pa­tion­al haz­ards of the twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry and the im­pact can be huge. While you can­not change the amount of work you have to do, or the num­ber of pa­tients you can en­counter in a giv­en day, ac­cord­ing to psy­ch­cen­tral.com, here are a few things you can do to help your­self:

“Be aware of how you are feel­ing each day.

While every­one has bad days, if you have been hav­ing a bad day for the last two weeks, some­thing is wrong. Go talk to a trust­ed friend or see a ther­a­pist to try to sort through some of the feel­ings you have been hav­ing so you can get back to be­ing the best you pos­si­ble.

Talk it out with a co-work­er if you feel over­whelmed.

In­ter­act­ing with an­oth­er per­son who can iden­ti­fy with what you are go­ing through can be very ben­e­fi­cial. Emo­tion­al sup­port from peers at work is es­sen­tial to com­bat burnout.

Take time to care for your­self.

Whether it’s dur­ing a 15-minute break or an hour be­fore bed, do some­thing that you find en­joy­able and re­lax­ing. Tak­ing a lit­tle “me-time” out of each day may seem dif­fi­cult to do but the ben­e­fits are def­i­nite­ly worth it.

Join a sup­port group.

Var­i­ous meth­ods such as mind­ful­ness-based stress re­duc­tion (MB­SR) com­bined with oth­er types of ther­a­py, such as group ther­a­py, can re­duce burnout sig­nif­i­cant­ly.”