Quick & Easy

Valerie Brooke, MD

Jan 21
5 min

Getting COVID

DETECTED. SARS-CoV-2. There were the words on the lab results page I had seen so many times at the hospital where I worked. I never...

67 views0 comments

Valerie Brooke, MD

Dec 6, 2022
6 min

Things that Get in the Way

I recently picked up a dusty book from the overflowing self-help shelf on my bookcase: The Gifts of Imperfection by Brené Brown. I’d had...

66 views1 comment

Valerie Brooke, MD

Oct 20, 2022
4 min

Words Matter

Quite frequently I will come across the word “non-compliant” in the medical record of a patient, one that I am going to admit to the...

79 views0 comments

Valerie Brooke, MD

Aug 15, 2022
5 min

Poor Insight

One of my favorite words in stroke recovery is anosognosia (a-no-sag-no-zhea). This is the bizarre symptom a patient often has after an...

51 views0 comments

Valerie Brooke, MD

May 9, 2022
5 min

Love and Money

It took me many drives to work to realize what bothered me about this billboard. At first, I thought it was because I could not for the...

69 views0 comments

Valerie Brooke, MD

Mar 1, 2022
3 min

I Wish I'd Known

Yesterday I was invited to give a talk to a group of about fifty freshmen undergraduates at the University of Nevada, Reno (UNR). These...

98 views0 comments

Valerie Brooke, MD

Feb 20, 2022
4 min

Death and Dying

I was not aware during my medical training how fearful patients and medical professionals are about the one thing that we all will...

77 views0 comments

Valerie Brooke, MD

Feb 14, 2022
3 min

Imposter Syndrome

I will never forget the first medication I ordered as newly practicing physician. It was my first internal medicine rotation of...

83 views0 comments

The Stigma of Mental Health Illness in Medical Professionals

Valerie Brooke, MD

Feb 7, 2022
4 min

The Stigma of Mental Health Illness in Medical Professionals

The other day one of my physician colleagues shared a story with me about some seemingly helpful advice he was given during the first...

96 views1 comment

Valerie Brooke, MD

Jan 31, 2022
3 min

Personal and Professional Perfectionism

To be perfect means to be “excellent or complete beyond practical or theoretical improvement.” Perfectionism is multi-dimensional and can...

116 views0 comments

Valerie Brooke, MD

Jan 23, 2022
4 min

Moral Injury

The term moral injury popped into the conversation about physician burnout back in 2018, when an article was published entitled...

84 views0 comments

Valerie Brooke, MD

Jan 16, 2022
3 min

Balancing the See Saw

On the way home from skiing last weekend my husband and I were humming along to the familiar 1968 Moody Blues song, “Ride…Ride my…blah...

45 views1 comment

Valerie Brooke, MD

Jan 9, 2022
4 min

The Owl and the Cheese

In 2001, Drs Friedman and Forster designed an experiment where two sets of college students were tasked to complete a computer maze,...

45 views0 comments

Valerie Brooke, MD

Jan 2, 2022
5 min

Doctors Don't Do Lunch

As part of my research on physician burnout, I have been reading books by other physicians who suggest multiple different strategies for...

79 views0 comments

Valerie Brooke, MD

Dec 26, 2021
3 min

A New Holiday Story

Yesterday at work, on Christmas Day, one of my patient’s care givers said to me, “Why are you here on Christmas? Did you get the short...

144 views0 comments

Valerie Brooke, MD

Dec 19, 2021
2 min

Professional Accomplishment

In addition to emotional exhaustion and depersonalization, not having a sense of personal accomplishment is the third symptom of burnout....

86 views0 comments

Valerie Brooke, MD

Dec 12, 2021
3 min

Resilience

What type of person comes to mind when you think of the characteristic of resilience, the ability to continuously bounce back from...

57 views0 comments

Valerie Brooke, MD

Dec 5, 2021
3 min

Depersonalization

The meaning of depersonalization has always alluded me. How can one not feel like a person? I finally understood it when I experienced...

88 views1 comment

Valerie Brooke, MD

Nov 28, 2021
2 min

Compassion Fatigue

When I realized last year I was feeling burned out in my job as a physician, I dove into learning as much as I could about the symptoms...

40 views0 comments

Valerie Brooke, MD

Nov 21, 2021
3 min

Permission To Feel

I recently had an interaction with a patient that had suffered a stroke and it got me thinking about emotions. I was asking this patient...

26 views0 comments