Decision Fatigue

“I feel like I have decision fatigue,” she told me.”

It was normal for her to make many choices at work, but COVID had dramatically increased the number of medical decisions she had to make at home.

She was the only medical professional in her immediate and extended family, so everyone looked to her for medical decisions, especially now.

Many of these choices were difficult and emotional, and many carried consequences for herself, her husband, and her three children. It was exhausting and overwhelming to deal with all of the decisions that were falling (rightfully, but still) on her shoulders.

Listener Poet Beck Klassen

Association of American Medical Colleges

March 2021

My professional voice

Makes choice after choice

As we descent into the unknown

It's the right thing to do

But it's difficult too

Deciding things all alone

My normal decisions

Are made with precision;

The guidance of our past

Now every assertion's

Emotional exertion

Makes me wish it were the last

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