Combating Burnout in Medicine: Dr. Andrew Slattengren’s Approach to Work-Life Integration and Physician Well-Being

Written by Emma Walytka, PHSRC Editorial Assistant 

Joining the University of Minnesota North Memorial Family Medicine Residency faculty in 2011, Andrew Slattengren, DO, is a founding member and remains active with Family Medicine Midwest. Selected as a Top Doctor by Mpls.St.Paul Magazine in 2024. Dr. Slattengren is also a former president of the Minnesota Academy of Family Physicians. 

Dr. Slattengren has been co-teaching the Future Physician Series with the Pre-Health Student Resource Center since 2012. In one of the courses, AHS 1612: The Future Physician – Life and Work of a Physician, he integrates slides on how he views work-life integration and burnout to help students and residents obtain skills that can help protect them from burnout while describing the difference between the calling of medicine from the benefits of medicine.

Growing up in the small town of Proctor, Minnesota, Andrew Slattengren always envisioned himself as being what he refers to as a “small-town doc.”

After attending Lake Erie College of Osteopathic Medicine for medical school in Pennsylvania, Slattengren got his Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine (DO) degree and found himself wanting to go back to the Midwest to complete his residency – so he could receive full-scope training in a smaller area. 

So, Slattengren found himself in Madison, Wisconsin, where he completed his residency; but halfway through, he got an “academic bug,” one that was pulling him toward teaching. 

“I couldn't figure out how to do that out in the middle of the woods,” Slattengren said. “ So, instead of going to a small town and being a family doc, I thought I should really find a program where I can do full scope medicine –  but still teach.”

Though Slattengren was a part of the faculty at the University of Wisconsin-Madison for three years, in 2011, he became a gopher and joined the University of Minnesota and has since been at the North Memorial Family Medicine Residency within the Department of Family Medicine. 

Wearing many hats, Slattengren has been the Medical Director, Associate Program Director, and the Director of Osteopathic Education, while also having involvement in nonprofits. 

It wasn’t until the end of his three years at Madison that Slattengren started to experience burnout, while at the same time, he was unaware it was happening. 

According to the National Institutes of Health (NIH), approximately 50% of medical students experience burnout, experiencing overall burnout, emotional exhaustion, and depersonalization more often than non-medical students. 

While at UW-Madison, Slattengren was doing what he thought was going to be his job for the rest of his career: full-scope family medicine, working in clinics and hospital settings, and delivering babies. He was also an academic, teaching residents and medical students, publishing work, and giving national presentations. 

From receiving a teaching award for educational residence to being one of the highest clinical producers, Slattengren was truly doing it all. 

Slattengren explained that when people get burned out in medicine, it’s not like other areas of study, where perhaps a bad paper is turned in. 

“When physicians or healthcare workers are burned out, patients get lower quality care,” Slattengren said. “When people are burned out, they are less likely to be aware of errors, leaving them at a higher risk for malpractice.”

Burnout can also contribute to increased odds of substance abuse with increased alcohol dependence, and, with most physicians not acknowledging symptoms or admitting to experiencing burnout, there is in turn, an increased risk of suicide, according to the National Library of Medicine. 

“So not only does the person who's burned out suffer, but really the people they’re supposed to be taking care of suffer as well,” Slattengren said. 

Though Slattengren said he was lucky not to experience burnout during his training, since graduating medical school in 2005 and graduating residency in 2008, he said burnout and mental health weren’t talked about at all. 

“It was more of a ‘you just pull your bootstraps and tough it out’ mentality,” Slattengren said. 

Now, Slattengren says there is much more discussion around burnout, to the extent that in the pre-health courses he teaches he talks about it to his class, along with inviting multiple presenters to talk about mental health issues in healthcare workers. 

On a state-wide level, medical physicians no longer have to cite if they are being treated for mental health issues, a push, Slattengren said he and fellow faculty have been working toward for the last five years. 

Slattengren’s advice to current pre-health students is to first and foremost know the ‘why’ behind going into medicine, because being able to reflect on why it's important to them can get them through difficult times. 

“The things that maybe you think of as a benefit of a job as a physician, like high income, recognition, or prestige from peers or your family, are the things that are not going to feed your soul long term,” Slattengren said. “That should not be why you're going into it. It should be because you want to help patients, be a lifelong learner, and experience growth.”

During his own training as a student, Slattengren said what helped him was having what he refers to as a structured existence. Through his first two years of medical school, he studied every weeknight, but as soon as classes were over on Friday, he took time away from work all until Sunday to decompress. 

Framework and stability can also help protect against burnout from volunteering your time, exercising more than three times a week, and having hobbies outside of the medical world, Slattengren said.

One of the lesser-known tools is learning to simply say “no,” Slattengren said.

“I was creating enough space in my life where I could say yes to the things I wanted to, and saying no to things I didn't want to do,” Slattengren said. “I'm weeding my own garden, getting rid of those activities that are taking up time that weren’t feeding my soul.”