Recent sports events have driven home a disturbing trend. Simone Biles dropping out of the Olympic gymnastics finals, Naomi Osaka pulling out of the French Open and Sha’carri Richardson being banned from the Olympics for legally using marijuana to cope with her mother’s death: these are the athlete’s equivalent of burnout. Like athletics, dentistry is also a high stress venture. It taxes us both mentally and physically, and carries high risk. Unlike for athletes, however, the risk isn’t solely ours. We can also (inadvertently) harm the very patients we are trying to help, especially when our heads aren’t in ‘the game’. Misdiagnosis, errors in treatment such as extracting the wrong tooth or poor treatment such as underfilling root canals harm our patients as much as the inevitably ensuing malpractice suits harm us. It is claimed that dentists are highly susceptible to burnout not only because of our chosen profession but also because of our personality traits. We tend to have obsessive-compulsive tendencies with unrealistic expectations and standards that verge on perfectionism. Is it any wonder we consistently fail to live up to our own self-imposed expectations? Especially now, given the additional stress of COVID-19.
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