Stress and Burnout – A rising Issue among Surgeons

A study published in the April 2009 Archives of Surgery revealed that 30 – 38% of surgeons across the country suffer from burnout.

That is no surprise to me and I can see these numbers rise rather quickly in the months and years to come if circumstances don’t change and challenges in healthcare continue to get worse.

The study suggests that younger surgeons and female surgeons are at especially high risk for stress and burnout, and lists a number of factors that lead to its cause, including:

• Length of training and delayed “gratification”
• Long working hours and enormous workloads
• Imbalance between career and family
• Feeling isolated / not enough time to connect with colleagues
• Financial issues (salary, budgets, insurance issues)
• Grief and guilt about patient death or unsatisfactory outcome
• Insufficient protected research time and funding
• Sex- and age-related issues
• Inefficient and/or hostile work environment
• Setting unrealistic goals or having them imposed on oneself

As the leader and head coach of the Balanced Physician program I work with my physician clients on the above mentioned topics on a daily basis.

More and more physicians are looking for outside help since they are not able to cope on thier own with all the challenges that they are facing in their practices and lives. Overwhelm, loss of control, damaged personal relationships and unfulfilled goals leave them empty, frustrated and burned out.

Coaching is the perfect vehicle for physician who want to regain passion for medicine, develop a sense of life balance and feel more fulfilled not only in their professional but also in their personal lives. Coaching

• Allows physicians the space to voice their frustrations, opinions and dreams without being judged
• Is a solution-oriented method of guiding physicians in the times of challenges and change
• Focuses on setting and achieving goals as well as bringing out their strengths
• Increases awareness, opens up new perceptions and offers new options for more effective behavior
• Is flexible and customized. They don’t lie down “on the couch” and it doesn’t get added to their files.
• Leads to significant results within a short period of time.

As long as healthcare organizations don’t recognize the importance of investing in the physicians’ personal and interpersonal skills, the above mentioned burnout factors will never go away. Now sure, physicians have to take responsibility for their lives and its results as well but I believe the healthcare organizations need to provide the education and access to physician coaching programs and personal development seminars. As the saying goes, “you can lead the horse to the water but you cannot make it drink.” Healthcare organizations cannot make physician drink but at least they can lead them to the water. By providing these kinds of programs, healthcare organizations not only invest in the productivity and well-being of their physicians but also in quality patient-care.

Iris Grimm
www.BalancedPhysician.com

Drug and alcohol abuse among healthcare professionals and how physician coaching can reduce or prevent it

In the January issue of the Atlanta Hospital News Susan K. Blank M.D. wrote an article on “2009 could bring increase in drug abuse among healthcare professionals”. In this article Dr. Blank explains that the economic situation and the financial uncertainty in the years to come can lead to an increased drug and alcohol abuse not only among the common population but also particularly among health care providers. Certain studies have shown that healthcare industry workers are more prone to drug abuse. Studies in the UK have shown that as many as 15% of medical professionals will abuse drugs or alcohol sometime in their career, with pain killers and sleeping pills the most common type of drug abused by medical professionals.

She continues “A complicating factor inherent in the problem of doctors abusing drugs is the reluctance of their fellow professionals to report their suspicion and the general unwillingness of the impaired physician to suffer the humiliation that attends a confession of his or her disease.”

You can read the entire article here at http://bluetoad.com/display_article.php?id=99942

After reading this article I was reminded again about the benefits of coaching for physicians. In my work as a coach I don’t talk with my clients about their alcohol or drug consume; it is none of my business; I am not a therapist and I am not a psychiatrist, I am their coach.

I support physicians who want to play a bigger game, who are ready to face what is not working in their practice and or life and we strategize the tools and methods to make improvements in a time-efficient way!

In our conversations my clients and I talk about their stressors, we talk about how they can streamline their responsibilities, simplify their lives, approach and resolve difficult conversations with colleagues or staff members. We talk about time wasters, we establish challenging goals, we are celebrating progresses and wins … we just talk about so many things. At the end of each conversation they walk away with an action plan to tackle and solve some of the issues, they realize how they shifted their perception about a specific topic and suddenly they feel a sense of relief or empowerment.

When we wrap up our coaching relationship I always ask my physician players how their life has shifted / changed over the months. And many times I heard some of them say “ever since I have been working with you / facing these issues, I come home and I don’t have the desire to pour a glass of wine or beer; I drink less, I sleep better, the energy at home is less tense. Even my family notices that I am more relaxed and present.”

I am proud of my “players” being honest with themselves and for themselves. Again, most of the time this is the first time that I hear from them that they had consumed more alcohol than they really wanted to. They are now having the awareness that alcohol didn’t fix their situation; just suppressed it. At the same time they are now having the awareness and the tools to resolve whatever it is bugging them and that takes away the thirst and desire for alcohol.

Again, coaching is not an intervention for physicians who are addicted to drugs or alcohols; however if you are noticing that you drink more alcohol now than you have in the past and you have been doing that because you feel frustrated with a certain situation in your practice and / or life, then physician coaching can be the perfect tool for you to move beyond it.

If you want to learn more about coaching, sign up for a complimentary consultation.

Iris Grimm
www.BalancedPhysician.com

Patient Survey to Improve Practice Efficiency and Patient Retention

Last year I wrote about the Zagat Survey for physician ratings: http://balancedphysician.wordpress.com/category/patient-service/

The Zagat Survey was designed to allow consumers to rate physicians based on 4 criteria: trust, communication, availability and environment. Patients are also allowed to leave comments.
Today I read that many doctors – including those in California, Connecticut and North Carolina, where the Zagat-WellPoint project was first introduced – voiced criticism.

William Handelman, president of the Connecticut State Medical Society said “It is curious that they would go to a company that had no experience in health care to try to find out how good a doctor is,” adding, “It certainly is very subjective.” Ronald Thurston, a psychiatrist, remarked, “Are patients the best judges of health care? Patients notoriously ignore their doctor’s advice to eat well and exercise. Often they quit taking their pills when they’re feeling better. They usually don’t understand the technologies and skills needed for treatment.”

Patients rate their physicians typically based on 2 criteria: their clinical skills and their interpersonal skills.  

A rating such as the Zagat Survey has less to do with the quality of the doctor’s clinical skills and the effectiveness of care but it allows patient members to rank physicians based on their interpersonal skills. In other words, it has something to do with the customer service experience of healthcare.

• How long did I have to sit in the waiting room?
• Did the staff communicate with me (the patient) when the doctor was behind schedule?
• Did the physician explain my disease in words and in a manner that I understood?
• Did the physician take his / her time to hear me out?  

Contrary to Ronald Thurston’s remarks, I believe that patients are the best judges of health care because they are the once who decide whether they come back to see their doctor again or not.

Physicians who realize that their interpersonal skills (whether it is the communication skills of the staff or of the physician) are part of their healthcare package will most likely spend less money on practice marketing or patient retention.

Therefore I recommend physicians who are not part of this Zagat Survey to include a similar patient satisfaction survey in their practice to improve the practice efficiency and patient retention.

Iris Grimm
www.BalancedPhysician.com

 

Medical Residents: Medical Mistakes and Burnout 5 Years after the Policy Change

USA today posted an article on lack of sleep of medical residents on Monday, August 4, 2008.  In this article they are talking about the 2003 policy change from the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education, which cuts shifts to 24 to 30 hours with a maximum of 80 hours per week.

This study of 220 residents shows only small improvements within the last 5 years:

• The number of residents working 30 or more consecutive hours changed from 80% of residents before 2003 to 56%.
• The sleep amount of 7 ½ hours a day stayed the same for residents.
• The number of mistakes – 1 ½ for every 100 orders given – stayed the same.
• Needle-sticks and car wreck incidents didn’t improve.
• Residents burnout decreased from 75% to 57%. 

As a result there have been positive changes regarding the residents’ burnout and the number of residents working 30 and more consecutive hours but when it comes to mistakes and accidents, there have been no improvements for the residents.

The article also talks about junior doctors in New Zealand who may not work more than 16 hours straight and 72 total hours a week. And in Europe doctors can work only 13 consecutive hours and 48 to 56 hours a week. Now the article doesn’t say what the medical mistake percentage and car accident rates of residents are in those countries.

Rebecca Sadun, director of student programming at the American Medical Student Associations states that cutting work hours cannot be the only answer. “We need more physicians in training. Without more residents, we can’t give people more rest.”

I am sure that is one of the reasons for this awareness-raising study. What else is missing?

Even though there has been a policy change, it doesn’t mean there has been a paradigm shift. After all, successful and permanent behaviorial change can only happen when it was preceded by a change of thinking. As Albert Einstein said, “The significant problems we face cannot be resolved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them.”

Why didn’t the number of medical mistakes improve? Interesting questions with several possible answers:

One could be that residents are too tired to concentrate which causes them mistakes. On the other side, if they say that they get about 7 ½ hours a night, that is a fairly good and normal sleep duration. Therefore it is difficult to say whether the concentration is such a major factor.

Another answer could be that residents don’t feel comfortable asking teaching physicians for help or advice. Many residents probably feel intimidated by their mentors to ask questions or admit a mistake so that it gets easily corrected. After all, many of these teaching physicians are not aware how to build trusting relationships with colleagues and staff members.

Rather than just giving residents a policy that the number of work hours gets limited to 80 hours a week, residents need to learn valuable self-management and interpersonal tools to maximize their time in residency such as:

• How to control stress and limit the energy drains in difficult situations
• How to communicate most effectively with nurses and teaching physicians
• How to put your ego to the side and use the collaborative environment
• How to raise your energy quickly and in a healthy way
• How to streamline life to leverage time

As long as residents and physicians don’t master these essential skills, no policy will create major improvements. What are your thoughts on that?

Iris Grimm 

Health Care Success Depends on You!

To excel in the highly demanding, ever changing health care market doesn’t simply require technical skills (clinical skills for health care providers; business skills for administrators, etc.); it equally requires self-management and interpersonal skills. A study by the Dale Carnegie Foundation revealed that 15% of our success is due to our technical skills and about 85% is due to our ability to lead and work with people and to manage ourselves effectively.

Our technical skills certainly need continual development, however, they are not necessarily the “one thing” that will make or break our career. In other words, our intellect, or IQ, is no longer the standard for success. A study of 95 Harvard students in 1940s who were followed into middle age demonstrated that those with the highest IQ scores did not have greater life satisfaction, the most happiness with family and friends, or the highest success in their career. We now understand that Emotional Intelligence, or EQ, has been found to be the better yardstick to measure success in both a professional and personal life.

So what characterizes successful professionals? The following six tips will help you become more effective, regardless what position you have.

1. Have a passion for what you do
Your true passion is that particular something you instinctively know will keep you fulfilled, an intense inner desire that makes you feel amazingly alive when you act on it. This energy and enthusiasm has a huge effect on the people around us and on the efficiency of our work. Individuals who feel passionate about what they do create more change and progress than people who perform their job only to receive a paycheck.

“Nothing great in the world has ever been accomplished without passion.”
- Christian Friedrich Hebbel

2. Control your stress
Stress can’t be eliminated from life – it will always be here! Part of stress is self-induced by thought patterns and behaviors; other types of stress are external and we can do little about it. Stress control is developing a certain awareness of internal and external circumstances and choosing to respond, rather than react.

“Life is a grindstone. But whether it grinds us down or polishes us up depends on us.”
- L. Thomas Holdcroft

3. Become an effective leader
In life – no matter what position we are in – we always have the choice to be a leader or to be a follower. Sometimes it is good to be the leader; sometimes it is good to be a follower.  Because many of us have no formal training in leadership, it is important to understand what it means to be a leader as well as how to mentor others to be leaders. Supporting the development of effective leaders is the key to success. The future of an organization and the quality of care and service provided to patients depends on the effectiveness of leadership.

“You must be the change you wish to see in the world.”
- Mahatma Ghandi

4. Master communication
Health care is a “relationship and people” business; its success depends on effective communication. When its process is fraught with error and messages are misinterpreted, communication wears us out and causes confusion, creating roadblocks that stand in the way of goals and missions. Communication only has power if we find a solution and move forward. Health care is based on human connection: communication is its foundation.

“Communication leads to community, understanding, and mutual valuing.”
– Rollo May

5. Develop your people
For teams to be successful they must develop a trusting and respectful relationship. A team gets stronger when good behavior is modeled, new team members are mentored, results are monitored, and good behavior is rewarded. By rewarding success, we develop individuals that focus on performance improvement. Effective leaders proactively develop team members and coach them to maximize their potential.

“People will exceed targets they set themselves.”
- Gordon Dryden

6. Invest in your personal growth
Devoting yourself to personal growth is a key ingredient for your success! After all, your outside world – the organization, the staff you work with, even your family – are always a reflection of your inside world. Personal growth equals change. To develop, we must often step away from comfort and welcome fresh and challenging experiences. Growth demands a temporary surrender of security: giving up familiar but limiting patterns, safe but unrewarding work, values no longer believed in, or relationships that have lost their meaning. Let them go; perhaps even sweeter rewards are waiting for you to create space for them in your life.

“Know thyself means this, that you get acquainted with what you know, and what you can do.”
- Menander

Iris Grimm, creator of the Balanced Physician Coaching and Training Program, can be reached at 770-428-2334 or at www.balancedphysician.com.

Annual Fee of Credit Cards

I have a couple of credit cards that I don’t use but rather keep for emergency times. One of the cards belongs to the bank where I also keep my personal account. While checking my personal account online, I saw that this credit card was charged $60 and when I looked at the activity I noticed that the 60$ were charged as the annual fee for the card.

Last year I used that card quite frequently since I was able to save miles with Lufthansa, the German airline and the annual fee was justified but ever since they discontinued this service I didn’t use the card again. So when I noticed the annual fee I decided to call the bank, cancel the card and ask for a refund.

Rather than procrastinating this phone call I took care of it immediately and I was really surprised when I heard the bank representative say, “Oh I am sorry but this credit card doesn’t charge an annual fee. I will immediately refund the amount to you.”

Wow, if I hadn’t noticed the charge and called the bank, I would have been required to pay an annual fee that wasn’t even justified.

How often does it happen to you that you don’t check your bank or credit card statement but just pay the amount requested? Go through your accounts – whether they are credit card accounts, insurance accounts, utility accounts, investment accounts etc and take a look at the fees that you are constantly charged. I am sure there are institutes that overcharge you without correcting it.
I saved $60 by making a 5-minute phone call. Another way of getting financially ahead.

Iris Grimm

Oncology Burnout – Prevent it Today

HemOnc Today published an article about the increasing rate of oncologist burnout and its lack of recognition. To summarize the article here are the most important facts:

Approximately one-third of practicing oncologists experience a significant career burnout, according to data from a collection of studies.

A 2003 survey, found that the rate of burnout in the U.S. oncology community exceeded 60%.
In 2007 the Annals of Surgical Oncology published that 28% of surveyed surgical oncologists reported having burnout. Burnout is more common among women and among surgeons aged 50 or younger.

Physician burnout can:

• have negative effects on patient satisfaction
• can affect patient compliance with medical care
• lead to an increase in medical error
• affects the integrity of health care
• raise personal consequences with respect to physicians’ personal relationships and their own mental, emotional and physical health

Top 3 signs of burnout:

• Frustration (78%)
• Emotional exhaustion (69%)
• Lack of satisfaction with work (50%)

What is burnout:
“syndrome of emotional exhaustion, depersonalization and a sense of low personal accomplishment that leads to decreased effectiveness at work”
“erosion of the soul”

Symptoms:

• Cynicism
• Explosions of anger and unexplainable body aches
• Stress
• Anxiety
• Depression
• Substance abuse
• Broken relationships
• Loss of enthusiasm for work

Preventing and treating burnout

According to the article, being proactive includes:

• Having a more formal mentorship program,
• Getting annual physical examinations and
• Being willing to seek professional help at an earlier stage of burnout.
• Having discussion with other oncologists about the job would also have a positive effect.
• Physicians should pay attention to their personal lives
• Get better training in some tasks such as delivering bad news and managing end-of-life care
• Be better prepared for business challenges at the office

Based on my experience burnout prevention has to be more than that:

Define what success means to you
The number of cancer patients is dramatically increasing each year and I could imagine if you, as an oncologist wanted to work and see patients 24 hours a day, you probably could. But would that be healthy for you?
Instead, you want to define what success means to you. What would make a “typical day” successful and would make you feel good about yourself and your profession? How many patients would you have to see?

Make self-care a priority
If you as a physician don’t take care of yourself, how can you be a good care-taker for your patients?
How would you feel if you went to a dentist who had rotten teeth? Would you feel comfortable getting your teeth done by this dentist? One important process for any type of healing is self-care and if you as a physician want to emphasize the importance of self-care, you want to role-model it.
Even though the patients don’t necessary see the diseases that are forming in your body (like you see the teeth in the dentist’s mouth), they feel your energy, your temper, your frustrations, and they do see the dark circles under your eyes.

Create goals outside of work
Setting goals outside of work helps us realize that life doesn’t evolve only around work. Too many physicians identify themselves only with their roles as a physician which leads easily to burnout. I order to feel joy for your profession, you need to be able to step away from it.
It is kind of like your favorite food. If you only ate your favorite food every day, for breakfast, lunch and dinner, very soon it wouldn’t be your favorite food anymore and soon you will hate it. Therefore include variety in your life. Set goals outside of work. Make appointments with family and friends, book that vacation spot and don’t bail out.
You think you are irreplaceable and your patients need you? Wait until you are diagnosed with a major disease and will be away from your practice for a while you and will see how quickly your patients adapt.

Learn to control stress
Stress is the predecessor of burnout which is part of life that you can control. Partly with exercise, partly with nutrition, partly with lifestyle changes and primarily with attitude and perspective. Knowing how to control and minimize stress has to become a major part of burnout prevention.

Work with an accountability partner / coach
Making meaningful improvements that benefit you can be challenging. After all, you have been programmed for so many years to put yourself last. If you continue putting yourself last, you will do a disservice to your patients and your family and yourself. Moving yourself up in the priority list doesn’t mean that you neglect your duties as a physician. With the help of a coach or accountability partner you can maintain and even increase your performance in your practice while also enjoying a satisfying life.

The article is very informative when it comes to raising awareness on the topic of oncologist burnout but in my opinion lacks practical and effective solutions.
Iris Grimm
www.BalancedPhysician.com

 

Visioning Success

January is typically the time of good intentions, positive resolutions and massive goal setting; a tradition that is hard to give up for many people.

We are counting now the 5^th week of the month. Are you still on track with your goals, your resolutions, your intentions? Have you given up on them already? Again? Or didn’t you even set any goals this year after failing last year?

My work with physicians and my observations have shows that most of them just hope for the best. They simply keep doing what they have been doing for the last years but they are still expecting different results (some call this insanity). And then there are a few others who want to do more or have more but they don’t take the time to put a strategy in place that guarantees them the success and the results they envisioned. A big mistake in my opinion.

For many people, a New Year is the next paragraph in their continuing story. The New Year doesn’t bring a new chapter, just a new paragraph to the same story they have been writing for several years. Each paragraph begins with a positive beginning, but soon gets lost in a maze of excuses. Oh, they don’t see them as excuses, but they are words designed to make it okay that they didn’t get things finished.

According to Erma Roquemore, author of “24Kt. Goal: Ten Steps to Personal and Professional Success” statistics show, that at least 50% of those who set a New Year’s resolution have abandoned it by the end of January and up to 90% by the end of the first quarter. Those are startling statistics.

Planning your day, your week, your month, your year, your life is important but you have to be smart about it and adjust the planning tool so that it does make sense for you. The dilemma with New Year’s Resolutions is typically that:

• People choose goals that they failed for the last five years. This history of failure sets up a continuation of failure.
• People choose goals that are unrealistic or too big to accomplish in the allotted time.
• People choose a goal but don’t develop a step-by-step strategy.
• People don’t realize that they have to make time / free up time for this goal, meaning that something else in life has to go.
• Most of their goals are based on “I should do this” rather than “I want to do this.” Hence the energy behind the goal is off.
• People lack the support of mentors, friends and motivators who encourage them to move beyond obstacles.

That doesn’t mean that you should give up on goal setting completely. After all, life is about making progress and improvement. It is not about standing still. Action is a delicious way to spend life experience. Action is one of the predominant reasons we have decided to come forth and be in a physical body.

A life without a desire or a dream is a nightmare we live out daily. Life needs direction; without direction we find ourselves going in circles; those circles steal our energy and leave us wondering not only what to do, but if it is the right decision. That can all be solved by defining our dream.

In the Balanced Physician program rather than focusing on goal setting, we focus on visioning. I am sure you have heard the quote many times, “some people spend more time planning their vacation than planning their lives and then they wonder why they don’t get anywhere.”

Stephen Covey emphasizes in his top-selling book “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People” the importance of “Beginning with THE END in mind.” Success by design. Whether a blueprint for a building, a growth plan for a medical practice, or a vacation planner for your next trip, it works. Begin with THE END in mind. That’s how to arrive at any destination you desire. It’s been said many different ways over the years, but that’s still my favorite way to say it… Envision any project, idea, or goal by thinking about where you want to end up.

What is a vision?
A vision is a magnetic force that stimulates the necessary energy, motivation, creativity and courage to reach an objective. Compelling visions have empowered and released human and organizational potential throughout history. The visioning process the way we use it in our program is a more holistic way of looking at what you want in your life. It doesn’t focus only on career / professional goals but also on family, financial, spiritual and relationship improvements. At the end all the pieces will fit nicely together like a puzzle.

Experience has taught us that a 3 year vision is more effective than just a list of goals for the upcoming year. Thinking in one-year terms is rarely a big stretch for people. Instead thinking in 3-year terms allows people to think big, outrageous goals. They get your creative juices flowing, they make your heart beat a little faster and they make you gulp.

Exercise:
Write it in a present tense, as if it were 3 years later, that same day. For example, today is January 29, 2008; write as if it was January 29, 2011 and talk about all the things that had happened since 2008. Think about all the things that you accomplished in your business, with your family, your investments, your personal development and your health. While going through this process, think big, let your imagination go, get in touch with your passion and your deepest desires.

Make sure you focus on what you really really want in your life and not what you should do in your life. After all, what you focus on you attract. When you know what you want for you life, when you can imagine it with passion and enthusiasm, it is almost guaranteed to come to you. If you feel that you don’t have the time for this or don’t know how to do it, contact me for further support.

Bonus tip:
One fun exercise that I include in my New Year’s ritual is to write down individual events that I want to experience in the New Year that don’t require extensive planning. So for example for this year, my list of events includes:

• A parachute jump
• Participation in another Schutzhund trial with my dog Cito
• Taking a 3 week vacation this summer

I look at this list at least once a week and focus on one of these events. And it is amazing how events fall into place; people show up, circumstances seem right.

“Twenty years from now, you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”
- Mark Twain

“Live in your imagination and not your memory.”
- Steven Covey

I am looking forward to reading your comments,

Iris Grimm
Creator of the Balanced Physician Program
www.BalancedPhysician.com 

Zagat Survey – An Opportunity or a Disadvantage?

According to an article in the Denver Post Zagat Survey (www.zagat.com) the online guide known for its ratings of restaurants, hotels and other attractions, intends to add doctors’ offices to its list. They partnered with WellPoint, the parent company of Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield, to allow consumers to rate physicians based on 4 criteria: trust, communication, availability and environment. Patients are also allowed to leave comments.
I could imagine that soon this feature will be available nationwide.

 

What does that mean for you, the physician? Do you see this as additional pressure on you or do you welcome this opportunity as a tool to attract more patients to your practice?

After all, it seems to me that the physicians, who know how to communicate effectively, the physicians who value the patients’ time by being on schedule and the physicians who quickly build rapport and trust have the advantage to increase their patient referrals with this online feature. They will be the one who will attract more patients while minimizing marketing efforts. 

Healthcare is consistently changing and improvements – not only on the clinical side but also with self-management and interpersonal skills – are a necessity. What are you doing to adapt to this changed environment? I am looking forward to reading your comments.

Iris Grimm
www.BalancedPhysician.com

Doctor Moral Shaky – Improvements are Possible

An article by the American Medical News dated January 15, 2007 reports, “according to a nationwide survey of physicians six (6) in ten (10) doctors have considered leaving medicine because they are discouraged by the health care system.”

As a result more and more physicians suffer from sagging morale, burnout and depression and the support from spouses and other family members is more important than every before.

Unfortunately, most physicians stress out more over circumstances where they have little or no influence such as low reimbursement rates, loss of autonomy and bureaucratic red tape just to mention a few. What would happen if physicians only stressed out over circumstances they could change? How would our healthcare system and their life quality improve?Reinhold Niebuhr says, “Grant me the courage to change what I can change, the strength to accept what I can’t, and the wisdom to tell the difference.”Most of the times we focus too much on the things that we cannot change and bang our heads on the wall instead of focusing on things where we have the power to change and look for solutions.
But we cannot change our situation if we don’t change our mind and belief system first.

As Gregg Broffman, MD, medical director of Lifetime Health Medical Group in Buffalo, N.Y., said “No one ever said, ‘Folks, the world is going to change professionally for you, not only technologically, but also in the way that business is done.”

It is time to change and to improve if you don’t want to continue complaining about the same things year in and year out. So what can you do to include improvements in your life and boost your morale?

1. Control stress
This might sound trivial to you but if you feel too stressed in your life, you won’t be open for change, you won’t have the RAM capacity in your brain to process new information. Learning more effective ways of living and practicing medicine requires a calm and focused environment with a manageable amount of stress and pressure.
To learn ways to control stress, visit http://www.balancedphysician.com/a-stresscontrol.html

2. Step outside of your box
People who stay inside of their box get stuck. Insanity is doing the same things and expecting different results. So, step outside of your box, try different ways to accomplish a task, read a book that is outside of your usual genre, try out hobbies that you have never done before. Stepping outside of the box gives you a different perspective of your situation and challenges.

3. Learn from accomplished colleagues
Being a successful and fulfilled physician in today’s healthcare environment isn’t easy but also isn’t impossible. So many physicians have developed their own formula for professional success and personal well-being. Learn from them, get in contact with them. Ask them questions. And then develop your own formula.

4. Stop listening to the ‘naysayers’
Some people enjoy complaining. They sometimes get their energy from complaining. But listening to naysayers can be very draining and discouraging. People and their attitude either give us energy or take energy away from us. Naysayers can only complain but in general cannot provide solutions. Therefore the best approach is to stay away from them. Establish your boundaries by letting them know that you do not want to hear their complaints anymore. If they don’t honor your request, step away.

5. Take small actions
Improvements won’t happen without action. Therefore think of one little step that you can do each day that leads you to long-term improvement.

6. Get support from a mentor or coach
It can be challenging sometime to make major improvements by yourself and stay motivated along the way. Our success in life is proportionate to our ability to ask for help. Therefore, if you want to succeed with your action plan, consider working with a mentor or a physician coach. They can assist you in minimizing mistakes and maximizing your efforts. And you will have so much fun along the way.

Medicine has not only become a field with bigger limitations but also with new opportunities. It is up to you if you are open to seize them.

Iris Grimm
www.BalancedPhysician.com