Guest Column
10 steps to contain health care stress
How to get off the stress treadmill
By Diane Cate
Medical Practice Management Consultant
Professional Management and Marketing
Santa Rosa, CA
The recent changes in health care have brought with them increased stress levels for all people involved in the medical field. Predictions indicate that this rapid pace of change will continue for the foreseeable future. There is, unfortunately, a resulting epidemic level of fear and stress among health care providers and their support staff.
The following tips are designed to be helpful to physicians, nurses, and medical practice staff, as well as any hospital or treatment staff exposed to this toxic problem.
1. Provide positive reinforcement for those around you. When co-workers (in your practice, in the hospital, professional peers, etc.) do a good job or appear to be having a difficult day, compliment them on their work or on how well they handled a situation recently.
You will feel less stressed and more confident when you give and/or receive a compliment. Not giving or getting positive reinforcement can cause "hardening of the attitudes."
2. Be willing to ask for and take a "timeout." We all need brief stress-reduction breaks during hectic days. Productivity and overall effectiveness increase when you take a moment to clear your head and collect your thoughts. Everything and everybody are likely to be right there waiting for you after you take a quick timeout.
3. Shift discussion and concentration from the problem to all the possible solutions. Stress is diminished when you concentrate on the positive rather than the negative. While you may not be able to control changes that come your way, you do have control over how you act or react to change.
Encourage those working around you to discuss solutions and concentrate on your own ability to come up with creative methods to cope with changes. When using a solution-oriented approach to serious problems, you are likely to feel less stress and more resilience.
4. Reach out to others and ask for help. You are not the only one in the medical field experiencing extreme stress at this time. No one person can possibly have all the answers. Ask fellow professionals and experts for ideas and assistance.
Given the independent nature of most physicians (and their staff), this may be foreign and therefore take some real effort. Synergy, teamwork, and continuing education are effective medicine for stress.
5. Develop positive affirmations, verbalizations, and visions of change. Because you can’t escape it, you must learn to envision change itself differently. Use Post-it notes to reinforce new attitudes and repeat positive phrases in your mind that allow you to transform the stress (or threat) you feel from change into a vision of change as an opportunity and a challenge to grow, learn, and evolve along with your chosen field.
Change can be an antidote for high stress levels. Use positive statements to strengthen your resolve to succeed.
6. Get out of the office at lunchtime (or some other mid-work period). Even if you end up at a meeting, get air, get perspective, and remind yourself that there is something beyond the pressure of telephones, patient demands, and managed care craziness.
7. Today’s problems may not be solved with yesterday’s outdated solutions. Each day, new books, continuing education workshops, newsletters, form templates, magazines (i.e. Medical Economics), and other resources come across your desk.
Although those items may include news you don’t really want to hear, they also regularly feature practical, ready-to-use tips and tools that can help reduce stress and improve time management.
Use all the resources that are available to you — particularly those you already have paid for or those that may be free. Make "let’s try a new way" your motto for both new and old challenges.
8. Use a regular exercise program to reduce stress. Research has proven that when you exercise, you experience an increased sense of well-being and a reduction in stress. If some form of exercise doesn’t get written into your appointment book, you probably are not prioritizing it high enough. You can’t blame anyone but yourself for not exercising.
9. Set realistic goals and limits in your work and write them down. Your self-confidence and the way you set goals will greatly affect the level of stress you experience. Maximized work output is critical in health care now (and always has been as far as most of us are concerned).
However, allowing yourself to think you can "do it all" or that you are indispensable will set you up for added stress and, ultimately, serious disappointment. Be realistic as you make a list of your short- and medium-term goals. Goals should be challenging yet attainable, written and measurable, clear and unambiguous.
10. Avoid the contagious nature of the stress epidemic. Never forget that, in most interactions, what you give out dynamically effects what you get back. If your tone communicates stress, resistance, displeasure, or impatience, you can expect to experience those same reactions from the person with whom you are communicating. The result is generally an increase in intensity and a stressful experience for both parties.
When you have the ability to meet stress exhibited by others with calm and understanding, you prevent stress from being contagious. Don’t be infected by stress and don’t be responsible for infecting others with it.
Diane Cate is a medical practice management consultant with Professional Management and Marketing in Santa Rosa, CA, and serves as a member of the American Academy of Family Physicians’ Network of Consultants, the American Medical Association’s Doctors Advisory Network, and the American College of Physicians’ Managed Care Resource Center Network of Consultants. Call (800) 79-CONSULT for consulting and appraisal information.
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