Working in high-stress environments is most likely your norm due to demanding schedules and scenarios that may be emotionally and physically draining. Stress, if left unchecked, can have serious implications for yourself, your practice and even your patients.

As experts in the field with knowledge in the importance of stress management, finding a routine that allows you to relieve stress is important to keep up with. So, let’s take a closer look at how to detect, manage, and overcome any stresses that may fall into any practising physician’s everyday life.

Detecting Stress in Your Life

Let’s start by dispelling a common misconception: stress isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Most people will become bored and check out if there isn’t a deadline or any pressure to succeed. If you’ve exceeded the “ideal performance” peak and stress persists, performance can plummet. Stress may be motivating, but this isn’t the case for everyone.

Many physicians are consistently on the upper end of the stress scale, so it can surface in a multitude of ways. Stress has the potential to disrupt every part of your life, including your emotions, actions, cognitive abilities, and physical health. Some common stress indicators you should be aware of include:

  • Getting irritated and annoyed quickly
  • Feeling overwhelmed
  • Having difficulty relaxing and quieting your mind
  • Feeling self-conscious, lonely, or unimportant
  • Fatigue
  • Headaches
  • Muscle tenseness, and general aches and pains

Stress Management Tactics

While it may appear that lowering stress in today’s healthcare environment is beyond your control, there are a few practices you can include in your schedule to make a difference. Getting rid of these stressors whenever possible will provide you more time to dedicate to activities you like, as well as more energy to deal with the stress you confront at work. We have just a few that may help lower stress levels and increase productivity:

  • Hire extra help or use scheduling tactics to reduce daily tensions in your life and at work. This will help you to feel less stressed in general.
  • Remain aware of your environment in order to recognize stressors when they arise and develop a plan to address them.
  • Create a dedicated portion of your day to non-urgent things like refill requests, phone messages, and referral paperwork so your day doesn’t feel constantly disrupted.
  • Try batch processing! Rather than tackling each duty one at a time, group them together and complete them all at once as needed.

Outside of these day-to-day tactics, as a practising physician, taking care of your body and personal needs should be at the very top of your list. You must become merciless in addressing your own bodily demands, such as obtaining adequate sleep, exercising regularly, maintaining a good diet, and engaging in stress-relieving hobbies.

Self-care and stress-reduction practices will not only benefit you as a doctor, but they will also benefit your patients. Focusing on self-care and stress management may help you relate to and overcome the issues your patient’s experience, allowing you to better assist them in doing so.

Looking for a strategy to minimize stress and increase productivity on a daily basis? Visit Imperial Lifestyle Management here to discover more about how we can help you decrease financial stress so you can focus on what matters most to you!