How to Begin Thriving After Experiencing Burnout as a Clinician, with Hope Cook, PA-C

Hope Cook, PA-C, life coach, author, and physician associate from Georgia Skin Cancer & Aesthetic Dermatology, spoke at the 2025 SDPA Annual Summer Dermatology Conference in Washington, DC, in a session titled ‘Healing Clinician Burnout: How to Resuscitate Your Life & Career.’

Cook, the author of a recently-released book called ‘Healing Clinician Burnout: How to Revive Your Life and Career,’ spoke in an interview at SDPA with the HCPLive editorial team about her session and book’s major takeaways. Specifically, Cook spoke about clinicians facing burnout and was asked about the 4 ways she states the sympathetic nervous system reacts to burnout.

“The body doesn't lie,” Cook explained. “I used to teach yoga, and we would say you hold issues in your tissues, so your sympathetic nervous system knows what's going on, even if you don't consciously realize it. I walk people through the 4 types of sympathetic nervous system activation. So one I mentioned was freeze, where you're just frozen. You can't get on Indeed.com, you can't look for a job. You're just stuck. The other one is fight mode. These clinicians are walking around angry, bitter, resentful, they're just mad, and that's how their nervous system responds to that cortisol. And then there's F-A-W-N, so this is where you put your needs on the back burner, and you're sort of in this overdrive people pleasing mode.”

In this mode, Cook noted, clinicians may appear to be thriving from the outside, but she states that when they are burned out, their nervous systems are pushing out cortisol all day. Cook highlights that these types of nervous system activation are not sustainable.

“Then the last one is flight, and this is where you want to run,” Cook said. “...So by recognizing that your nervous system is doing this, it allows you to sort of step back and say, ‘Okay, this is really a fight or flight situation here.’ I need to get myself in a psychologically safe place so that I can think rationally and start making a plan.”

One of Cook’s session’s goals was to help providers identify 3 steps they can take to begin healing their burnout. During her interview, she was asked to share an example of a small but meaningful step that can help a clinician start improving..

“One of the most powerful tools is one of the simplest,” Cook explained. “I call it ‘feel and need.’ So if you can just pause throughout the day and ask yourself, ‘What do I feel?’ You know it takes noticing to notice, and so often we just go through our days on autopilot. We don't notice that we're anxious or disappointed or sad. So you pause, you notice what you feel, and then you ask yourself, ‘What do I need?’ And by doing that, you sort of turn yourself into the observer. So it takes away some of that activation that you've been feeling, and it also puts you in the seat of sort of a compassionate witness.”

For any further information related to the topics highlighted here by Cook, view her full interview segment posted above the summary. To find out more about related topics in dermatology, view our latest conference coverage.

The quotes used in this video summary were edited for the purposes of clarity.