How a GP Collapsed From Burnout and Found Her Way Back to Medicine Episode 179

Dr. Jenny Brockis was the first one in and the last one out. She was dictating notes into her phone on the drive home. Her patients were asking the receptionist whether she had cancer because of how much weight she had lost. And she was still telling everyone she was fine. It took collapsing on the floor of an osteopath's rooms to stop her completely, and 12 months of recovery before she could see clearly what had actually happened.

In this episode, Dr. Brockis traces her journey from burnout in general practice to lifestyle medicine and health coaching, and asks a question that every driven doctor needs someone to ask them: what is actually realistic and sustainable here?

Highlights

[03:00]: Dr. Brockis describes the moment her burnout became impossible to ignore, and why the first thing she felt when she walked out of her practice for the last time was not relief but shame.

[08:00]: She set up her own general practice from scratch with no business training, no template, and no one to tell her that running it the way she imagined would cost her everything.

[13:00]: Her husband bought her a mobile phone so she could dictate notes in the car on the way home. She thought it was a solution. It was a warning sign she drove straight past.

[19:00]: A psychologist told her something about herself that she had never once considered in over two decades of clinical practice, and it reframed everything she thought she knew about why she burned out.

[28:00]: Dr. Sarah Smith asks her to coach her former self. What Dr. Brockis says she would have needed to hear is something most doctors never get told.

[43:00]: She closes with three things she wishes someone had given her permission to do much earlier, and the question she now asks every doctor she works with.

Three Key Takeaways

1. Burnout does not happen overnight, and it does not announce itself.

Dr. Brockis lost nearly 10 kilos. Her patients were whispering to her receptionist that she looked unwell. Her colleagues were watching and waiting. She was exhausted before she got out of bed in the morning. And she kept going, because she had built an identity around pushing through. By the time she collapsed, burnout had been building for months, possibly years. The warning signs were visible to everyone around her long before she could see them herself, which is why she now argues that reflection needs to be a scheduled practice, not something that happens by accident.

2. The sustainability skills that could prevent burnout are not taught in medical training.

Dr. Brockis set up her own general practice with no business training, no boundaries framework, and no one to ask what a sustainable clinical day actually looked like for her specifically. She is now working to get lifestyle medicine and behavioral change into medical school curricula, not because it is one more thing to teach, but because she believes it is the missing piece that keeps excellent doctors in medicine. The skills are learnable. They just need to be taught before the collapse, not after.

3. Connection was the thing that made recovery possible.

When Dr. Brockis finally stopped pushing, it was not just professional support that brought her back. It was colleagues from other practices reaching out. It was sitting in a friend's kitchen drinking tea. It was the basic human experience of being with people who were not asking anything of her. She had spent years filtering connection out of her day without realizing it, and rebuilding it was not a secondary part of her recovery. It was the foundation.

Guest Bio

Dr. Jenny Brockis is a UK-trained doctor, lifestyle medicine advocate, and health coach based in Perth, Western Australia. After burning out completely from running her own general practice and spending 12 months in recovery, she spent over 16 years as a health and wellbeing consultant before training in lifestyle medicine and adding her fellowship to her accreditation.

She now works with doctors and healthcare professionals who are burnt out, stuck, or navigating career transitions, and advocates for lifestyle medicine to be integrated into medical and allied health training. She is the author of Thriving Mind and writes a weekly blog at drjennybrockis.com.

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