President’s Message

continued from page 3

As I write about burnout, I want to point out that while all specialties in medicine experience burnout, primary care providers experience the most. Medical education costs are the same for all, but with higher stress and lower pay, it is no wonder it is difficult to attract students to the field of primary care.

The treatment, or the prevention, of burnout will take as much effort, time, and energy as the cause of the problem. Burnout comes from a lifestyle. Self-care, the treatment for burnout and the prevention for burnout, is also part of a lifestyle. People believe that relaxing is easy; however, to truly include relaxation as a part of our lifestyle takes a lot of effort and work. It means that we need to step back and evaluate the work-life balance that we have. Then we need to be willing to make lifestyle changes to correct, or keep, a proper work-life balance.

No, self-care is not as simple as going for an occasional walk, doing yoga, taking a warm bath, or doing breathing exercises. This is especially true when the walking and the breathing are done mixed in with treating very ill patients. As hard as we work in our profession, we need to work as hard in our relaxation. The relaxation needs to be separate from the activity which causes the stress. Exercise, relaxation, and self-care need to be done with no ulterior motive other than the peace of mind that it gives us.

We need to take the time to evaluate the stress in our lives. Then we need to take the time to evaluate how we decompress. Once this has been done, we need to make the effort to balance the two. We need to learn to say no when asked to do more of anything that will cause increased stress. Do not compromise your relaxation time to fit in a stressful project.

It is easy to say we need a good work-life balance, but how does one accomplish this? I am a concrete thinker, or as some have said, I am a blockhead. So, let me give specific, concrete suggestions on how we can do this.

First, create a “No Work Zone.” This might be a particular time of the day or a particular place. Either way, proclaim it a workfree zone when/where you do not work, including not checking your email, not taking, or making phone calls, not charting on a computer, and not even talking shop to a colleague. This “No Work Zone” should not just be a physical no work zone, it should also be a mental no work zone. It is important to learn how to detach our mind from the stressors. Worrying about work, and even just thinking about work, takes a lot of mental energy. When relaxing, make a conscious decision to be in the moment. The physical changes are much easier to accomplish than the mental changes. By setting up a safe haven, we have a dedicated time and space for connecting with our loved ones and escaping the demands of our medical practice.

Get organized. Make a list, physical or mental, of the relaxation activities you most want to include in your “life” side of the worklife balance. Calculate how much time will be needed to complete these “life” side activities. Sometimes our work-life balance is misaligned because we fail to manage our time properly rather than because we don’t have enough time. Schedule everything that you either need to do or want to do. “Needs” and “wants” are always two separate but interacting categories. Reserve time on your calendar for specific “work” tasks and “life” activities. This will help you keep tabs on what you need to accomplish, ensure that you meet your deadlines, take time for yourself and your family, and enable you to see when you are overextended.

When asked to commit to something in the future, don’t base your answer on how busy your schedule appears around the date of the commitment, base your answer on whether you could fit the activity in now. If you would be too busy to do it now, then you will be too busy when the time comes to do it then because you will continue to add things to your schedule so that you will be as busy later as you are now.

Make sure you set priorities. Not everything on our list holds the same level of importance. This is where your “needs” list and your “wants” list will interact. Determine what is a “must-do quickly” versus a “must-do in the near future” versus a “must-do but not anytime soon” versus a “don’t really need to do at all.”

Take a good long look at what things are interfering with our ability to better balance our time. Today many of us work with nurses, nurse practitioners, physician assistants, care coordinators, social workers, medical assistants, and others. Let the people around you help decrease your work. Make sure that you and the staff you collaborate with stay in your own lanes, or the help can increase rather than decrease your stress. When you are working well with your staff and colleagues, you will find you have more time to focus on your own critical tasks that you, and only you, can tackle. This, in turn, will increase time for reconnecting with family and friends, and getting a good night’s sleep.

This is not a zero-sum game. The work-life balance scale will usually tip in one direction or the other depending on many things: the stage of your career that you are at, and whether you own your own practice or are employed by a health system that is productivitydriven are two examples. Sometimes we will need to make our career our number one priority, and other times we will have to push work aside to pay more attention to our family and friends. There will be an ebb. There will be a flow. We may rarely experience complete balance at any given moment; but overall, if it is done right, over time it will even out.

Finally, while I am recommending that we each work to accomplish this elusive “work-life” balance, try not to worry so much that the attempt at righting the scales causes more stress than the status quo. If you constantly stress over it, your efforts will be counterproductive. Cut yourself some slack as you navigate running your personal life and caring for your patients. It may take time to figure out the formula that will work for you, but with some experimentation and patience, you can master it and prevail.

And just to be honest and transparent, I am writing this as much for myself as I am for my colleagues.