Physician, heal thyself: A recipe for a happier health care professional
Physician, heal thyself
Lee Lipsenthal, MD, a physician in Sausalito, CA, gives his recipe for a happier health care professional:
• Take a breath: Before you enter the room to see a patient, stop, take a deep breath, and think of someone you love. This shifts you to a place of calm and focus.
• Take your own diet and exercise advice: If you’re not physically well, you can’t be a good teacher to your patients.
• Relate adult-to-adult: In conversation with patients, look at them as adults and equals. This keeps you focused and listening to what this particular patient is saying rather than making assumptions that you already know their story.
• Show appreciation: Choose a staff member or co-worker a day and think of that person with gratitude for what that individual offers to make things run more smoothly in your workplace. You may not wish to tell anyone what you are doing at the beginning, but even this positive thought pattern will help build cohesiveness among your co-workers and re-focus your thoughts on positive qualities.
• Prioritize your work: Put yourself first, your family second, and your patients third. This may seem contrary to what you learned in school, but if you are better balanced, everything in your life will be better balanced.
• Get off the pedestal: It’s lonely up there, and social isolation is a well-documented risk factor for disease.
• Say the three hardest words, "I don’t know": Admit you don’t know the answer to a question and then promise you’ll find the answer and follow through.
• Go into your cave: When things become overwhelming, take a few minutes to shut yourself away from the world and re-focus. This might be in your office, the staff bathroom, or even the broom closet. Find a way of letting fellow workers know you are taking a brief timeout, not more than 10 minutes, and they’ll see that you come back with more clarity, so they’ll encourage these kinds of breaks.
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