RMDC: SPEAKER PREVIEW SERIES
Shift Your Energy
to Shift Your Burnout LAURA BRENNER, DDS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Dr. Laura Brenner graduated from Baylor College of Dentistry and then moved to Denver to establish her dental roots. She worked in private practice for 10 years until she left clinical dentistry. As the author of the Lolabees blog, she began connecting with other dentists from around the world who wanted more from their careers. This work inspired her to become a Certified Professional Coach.
14
Do you ever feel burnt out by burnout? The word is everywhere these days. I’ll admit, as someone who loves helping others reduce burnout, even I get sick of hearing it. There’s a reason this word gets so overused though. Burnout is a pervasive problem that we, as a profession, still struggle to solve. During my decade in practice in the early 2000s, no one talked about burnout in any career. Looking back, I now see that I was burnt out for 7 of my 10 years in practice. Because no one discussed burnout, I didn’t know what it was. I simply thought I hated my career. Eventually, the pain I experienced was too big, and I had to quit dentistry. Fast forward eight years after leaving the profession, I began to study burnout in 2019. As I researched for my first-ever presentation on burnout for the RMDC, a lightbulb went on: all those years I thought
M D D S D E N T I S T. C O M