Dr. Amar Rewari Talks Physician Burnout and Restorative Travel in Medscape

Dr. Amar Rewari was featured in Medscape Medical News in a story examining how physicians are rethinking vacation in response to rising burnout. The piece follows a growing preference for slower, lower-stimulation trips over tightly scheduled, bucket-list itineraries, citing survey data showing the vast majority of travelers now favor trips built around rest and meaningful experience.

Dr. Rewari offered a different angle. He described himself as an active traveler who fills his days with historic sites, local food, culture, and conversation — and explained that the shift in mental gears is itself the recovery. Medicine demands sustained focus on other people's needs and consequential decisions inside a highly structured environment, he noted, so engaging a different part of the brain becomes its own form of decompression.

He also pushed back on the idea that burnout is purely a rest deficit. Rest matters, he said, but restoration can come from novelty, curiosity, relationships, nature, and culture — experiences that remind physicians their identity extends well beyond their work.

Dr. Rewari is an adjunct assistant professor of radiation oncology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.