The term burnout is becoming more and more widely known. The honest truth is if you are overworking and not taking care of yourself you too may be on a path leading to burnout. I still consider myself a new graduate. After graduating from physician assistant (PA) school, I anticipated it would take me many years before I would possibly reach the dreaded burnout level. I am young, healthy, and don’t have children. Therefore, it would be impossible for me to become burnt out so early in my career right? Instead of continuing to worry about reaching that point in my career I decided I needed to become proactive. I made the decision that the right way to tackle this was to learn how to prevent burnout. My new goal was to start that process as soon as possible.
I was getting in the habit of collapsing onto the couch every day when I got home. At which point, I would then start eating mindlessly while watching TV next to my equally-exhausted husband. After several weeks of this I started to wonder, “is this what it’s going to be like for the rest of our careers”? The thought made me shiver. I knew I needed to make a change. This is when I dove headfirst into the world of self-care and self-development.
I have always been the type to aim for bigger and better. I am the typical type 3 enneagram “the achiever”. This personality trait is what got me into PA school and what led me to graduate with honors. Once I achieved the “dream career” I didn’t know what the next step was. Here I am in my late 20’s having already achieved my career goal in life. This couldn’t be all there was.
With that thought in mind and books like Atomic Habits by James Clear in my personal library, I began to focus on new personal goals like getting in the best shape of my life and starting a creative output (this blog). As of this moment, thIS blog is simply a new habit I have incorporated into my weekly routine to ensure I am doing something different with my days besides watching the next episode of Ted Lasso.
Since incorporating the following three overarching habits into my daily routine I have noticed several things. I have noticed my performance at work improving, my relationship with my husband strengthening, and an overall improved mood and increased levels of happiness. Here are the three non-negotiable goals/habits that have changed my life and that I believe will help prevent burnout as a busy medical provider.
RELATED: Should You Work 4 or 5 Days Per Week as a Physician Assistant?
I follow the Miracle Morning
The Miracle Morning was first introduced by Hal Elrod in his book The Miracle Morning: The Not-So-Obvious Secret Guaranteed to Transform Your Life (Before 8 AM). The book encourages waking up early and incorporating a morning routine into your daily schedule. It consists of 6 activities that you can remember with the mnemonic SAVERS.
SAVERS stands for Silence, Affirmations, Visualization, Exercise, Read, and Scribe. My miracle morning normally goes something like this… I wake up at 3:45 AM. (Yes I know this is absurdly early but I also go to bed around 8 pm every night). My morning starts with silence, which means I do not look at my phone. I immediately make myself coffee with my Nespresso machine and then I go our comfy leather couch in our living room. I then turn on my meditation app and do a short either 3 or 5-minute meditation that focuses on simply breathing.
Once I have completed my meditation I then repeat affirmations a few times. The current affirmations I am focusing on are related to my health and well-being. It helps motivate me for my workout that is coming. Next, I visualize what I want. This is actually a fun practice and I use Pinterest as a tool to help me do it. It could look like scrolling through beautifully decorated houses, luxury handbags, tropical travel destinations, etc. I visualize something that is currently out of reach but something I am actively working towards.
Next, I get ready to go to my 5 AM CrossFit class which is a 15-minute drive from my house. Fortunately, my husband also goes with me and always drives. He likes to wake up at 4:15 which gives him just enough time to get ready. The extra 30 minutes for me are vital to wake up and motivate myself to go to the gym. Since starting CrossFit we have both become not only stronger physically but also mentally. I have always wanted to be a morning workout person. However, I have never been able to maintain going that early in the morning. With my husband as my accountability partner, I have successfully woken up and gone to the gym between 3-4 times every work week for the past 3 months.
Since the workout class is early, after we get home and shower and eat breakfast, I normally have another 30 minutes of free time where I can read and write in my journal before I head off to work. I have read 4 books since the beginning of the year (it is March at the time of writing this), by incorporating this into my morning routine. When I scribe in my journal I write about anything I want for that day. Some days it is what I am grateful for and other days it is focused on goal setting. There is no wrong way to scribe as long as you stay consistent.
I leave my work at work to prevent burnout
When I first started becoming super busy at work I would focus on seeing patients and would worry about charting later. This would lead me to work after normal work hours pretty much daily. It also would also on occassion cut into my weekends, which meant time away from my husband. It was becoming really taxing on my mood and relationship.
After coming to the conclusion that I was headed towards burnout, I decided one thing that I needed to cut out was working after normal work hours. This meant that if I wanted to get the job done during the day I was going to need to be more efficient with my time. Fortunately, for the most part this happens naturally the longer you have been seeing patients. The more comfortable I got with treating common skin disorders the less time I needed to spend with a patient in order to give them what they needed in terms of counseling, education, and plans for treatment.
Another thing I did at work that was tremendously helpful was teaching my medical assistant (MA) how to properly document the encounter. Once I taught my MA how I liked things done it lead to less work for me. This was extremely helpful in time efficiency.
Something that may be a little controversial that I do is I cut back on my personal time during my lunch break. I do give myself at least 15 minutes for lunch. The remaining portion of my hour lunch break I use to catch up on charting and calling patients. I rather use that time for work than use my limited hours after work every day.
Being able to leave work without worrying about having to continue working at home has been transformational, to say the least. If I do have something that I have not completed for the day, then I will aim to get to work a little earlier the next day to play catch up. This change has benefited me. I have gone several months now where I am able to go home and not think about work at all.
I invest in other interests (like this blog)
For the longest time, I had a one-track mind. For years all I cared about was school and grades. Once I graduated from PA school, all I cared about was work. I was a self-diagnosed workaholic, which to my employers I am sure was amazing. Unfortunately, it meant I was inadvertently neglecting other important aspects of my life. This included my social life and for a while my health.
I finally came to the realization that something needed to change. I knew I needed to force myself to try something new. In enters the world of blogging. I am aware I am still talking about work but it does open up a door for me to be more creative and flex my previously non-existent writing muscle.
Blogging has become a therapeutic exercise that allows me to escape for a period of time. I started blogging around the same time I started scribing with my Miracle Morning routine. I figured if I was going to write then I might as well type so it never gets lost in case I want to revisit my thoughts. It would be cool if one day the blog turned into something else entirely but for now, it is what I need it to be. A way to express my thoughts in a different way. Writing is also extremely restorative in my opinion.
Another interest I have started exploring besides CrossFit is the world of finance. I have been reading about investing a lot recently. My first priority is paying off my student loans (which I am finally making a dent in!) Once those are paid off, I am going to get serious about investing and will likely start writing some blog posts about my personal journey with that. The Financial Independence, Retire Early (F.I.R.E.) movement is very appealing and something I plan on pursuing.
This has been a much longer blog post than normal and oddly enough has also been surprisingly more fun to write than my other posts. My methods of preventing burnout have been rewarding in more ways than one. I find the world of self-development fascinating and in alignment with my personality type. You can expect more personal blog posts like this one from me in the future. Until then, if you can relate to anything you read here I would love to chat and become friends. Feel free to email me at jessdermpa@gmail.com!
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