Burnout and Career Change
Flames
Feeling burned out in your current professional position and wondering what is next? If social media platforms are an indicator, there are many RDNs who are feeling unsettled about their current career situation. After investing time, money and sweat equity earning the RDN credential (or a graduate degree), and then building street cred with experience, you have lost the passion that initially drove you to the profession. What’s going on?
Digging a little deeper and thinking about the dissatisfaction being expressed, the root cause seems to be burnout. While we often think about burnout occurring after years of practice, the recent social media posts suggest that new practitioners in all areas of practice are burning out, however most specifically in the clinical nutrition sector.
What is contributing to the burnout? In the outpatient setting, are you being asked to see too many clients each day without any breaks? Is the staffing level for providing inpatient nutrition care inadequate? Does the health care team undervalue your nutrition expertise when delivering patient care? Even if you are intrinsically motivated to do good work (i.e. you don’t need a pat on the back), if the leadership team fails to recognize your contribution and demonstrate gratitude for your effort, that can leave you feeling burned out.
Leading causes of burnout
A review of the leading causes of burnout results in the following list of factors, succinctly summarized in this Harvard Business Review article by Elizabeth Grace Saunders
Do any of these resonate with you?
Workload. Simply put, this is where an imbalance exists between the work expected vs the reality of what can be done. Is management aware of this disparity? Being overworked is the leading cause of burnout.
Perceived lack of control. In one word – autonomy. Do you have any sense of control in your job? Maybe there is an expectation that you are available 24/7.
Little recognition for the work you do. Extrinsically motivated people thrive on positive feedback; it inspires them to work harder. If you feel that no one on the leadership team is paying attention and acknowledging your effort, your sense of professional worth tanks.
No sense of community. If you work in a place that lacks connection to others and there is no sense of psychological safety, perhaps there is a better place for you to work.
Absence of fairness. There is plenty of room for bias, favoritism, and unfair treatment in any work setting. For RDNs, low compensation compared to other health professionals on the team is frequently a source of resentment.
Divergent values. When workplace values become incompatible with your own, it may challenge your work output. It is difficult to carry the company torch when you feel a disconnect to the management values and priorities.
Regardless of the cause and/or area of practice, burnout is real. And is usually a systems problem, not rooted in an individual’s circumstances. The question is and is being asked on social media – what to do about it. Leave your current position in search of a better fit? Abandon the profession entirely?
Now what? Where do you begin?
Take a deep breath, pause and begin to reflect. What do you enjoy about your current work? What is your passion? What has contributed to the sense of burnout?
Time for a personal/professional strategic planning session. Invite a colleague to join you. The first time I completed a 5-year professional development plan for maintaining my RDN credential, it was helpful to have a trusted colleague share the process. How so? She was able to call attention to important skills that I was overlooking, and she challenged me to dig deep in my assessment of skills, expertise and areas that needed strengthening. Complete a SWOT analysis or whatever planning tool is familiar to you. I like the SWOT analysis model because it requires an honest appraisal of what I see as my strengths (there are so many soft skills that are marketable in another position and/or sector) and weaknesses (yup – we all have some – it is the human condition). The opportunities are where you start to convert your strengths into the next possible career options; and how you can market yourself in a non-dietetics specific way. Lastly, the threats. For sure, the concept sounds scary however these will help you to scale up your knowledge and skill set.
Develop a plan. Commit to SMART goals or you might never move forward because there is no sense of holding yourself accountable to a time frame.
No matter what your next step is – I encourage you to maintain your credential. You worked hard to earn it; getting it back is a lot of work. Consider it an insurance policy until you find your next career niche.
Moving forward
After completing your personal SWOT analysis and setting some goals for next steps, reconsider your current situation.
Have you had a conversation with your manager? I am surprised at the number of friends and acquaintances who have expressed unhappiness in their jobs and begin searching for a new position without ever having had a discussion with HR or their manager (for assorted reasons). When you are contemplating a move to another company, you have nothing to lose by expressing what is contributing to your exit before submitting your resignation. There may be a possible fix that hasn’t been explored because the conversation never happened.
Begin to set boundaries. What can you start to say “no” to?
Seize opportunities in your current position that challenge you to stretch and push the limits on your comfort zone. Seek new roles and responsibilities that will diversify your work and build new skills.
To recap – burnout is real. There may be factors contributing to your current situation that are modifiable. If not and you are at the point where change is the only viable option however aren’t sure about what steps to take next, join us for a live webinar on July 25 at 12:00 noon EST. A successful career changer will discuss her own process of transitioning from clinical practice in a university setting to regulatory affairs and we will get you started on developing your own strategy for moving forward. If you are interested, contact us to learn more details.