I don’t know a single physician who hasn’t felt overwhelmed at some time, and commonly, felt it very often.  For a long time, I was too busy keeping my own head above water to notice how/what others were doing to deal with it.  Surprisingly then, it was actually during a moment of overwhelm that I discovered another possible perspective.

A few weeks after the 2004 Tsunami that leveled much of Indonesia's Banda Aceh province, I worked with an NGO medical...