How can a doctor deal with stress at work?

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

Simple guidelines to help make your life more relaxed.

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How can a doctor deal with stress at work?

Yuri Domodedonenko

The profession of a doctor is traditionally one of the ten most stressful activities: it is associated with a sense of the burden of responsibility for the patient's life, fear of making a mistake, tension and anxiety.

At normal times, a high level of fatigue, emotional exhaustion, and stress is noted by up to a quarter of doctors. 73% of healthcare workers.

What causes stress and how it manifests itself

Stress is a nonspecific reaction of the body to extreme stimuli (stressors). For doctors, such extreme and often chronic irritants are contact with the suffering of patients, their death, intense workload, unstable work schedule, blockages from paperwork, a sense of legal insecurity, lack of support from management and colleagues, conflicts with patients and their relatives.

All of these are “external” causes of stress, but there are also “internal” triggers based on the system of values, human claims, which are activated when the system of the doctor's moral guidelines collides with a rough, harsh, unfair reality.

Then a high level of responsibility, perfectionism, dissatisfaction with one's own social and material situation, the experience of injustice or inadmissibility of what is happening trigger a stressful reaction.

For example, this is how dissatisfaction with the results of your work arises, associated with the influence of external factors: "I am a doctor, not a secretary, because of these papers of yours I have no time to treat", "I brought my gastritis on a Mercedes, and the door opens for me with a kick."

In medical workers, occupational stress makes itself felt by irritability, irascibility, nervousness, anxiety, feelings of insecurity or helplessness, decreased mood up to depression, and sleep disturbances.

Often there are problems with concentration, memory and attention are impaired, interest in work disappears, it becomes difficult to motivate yourself to do something important. Later, various psychosomatic disorders join.

And then professional burnout sets in - a state of emotional, physical and mental exhaustion, in which the doctor can no longer perform his work with the same efficiency and does not feel satisfaction from his own life.

How a doctor can deal with stress

Fortunately, all these troubles are surmountable and reversible. There are prevention strategies and techniques to help you manage stress at work.

1. The most important thing is to take care of yourself, your mental and physical well-being. Rest on time, eat on time and with good quality, get enough sleep, maintain relationships with family and friends, communicate with interesting people, play sports and your hobbies. Taking breaks from work is not selfish, but rational. The needs of the surviving patients are no more important than your own needs and your well-being.
2. Remember your own values. Be aware of ideas that you can rely on in difficult times: why did you become a doctor, what you can bring to other people, what good you know about yourself, what you believe in.
3. Draw boundaries and don't be afraid to say no when you are not ready or able to respond to someone's request. Do not take on someone else's responsibility, no matter how committed you are to the cause you serve. You need to know your rights and responsibilities, insist on ensuring the proper working conditions.
4. Get support. If possible, talk to your loved ones and friends about your fears and worries. Discuss the problem with colleagues, with management, in the professional community. There is always someone who can help you with business or advice, and you can ask for it.
5. Watch what you think. Catch disturbing ideas, be aware of any negative thoughts about yourself and ideas of self-condemnation and question them: is it true, is it about you, what is the situation in reality. Be a lawyer for yourself, not a prosecutor.
6. Track your mood changes. Try to identify what events, actions of others, what words or even your own thoughts triggered anxiety, anger, or depression.
7. Learn to feel your bodily reactions, identify discomfort. Try to understand how they relate to your mood, to the events of the past day. Sometimes we "confuse" the needs of the body and are in a hurry, for example, to satisfy the feeling of hunger, when in reality we are sad and lonely.
8. Get to know your stress. Understanding what is causing you stress, how you react to it, where it all starts, what or who can help you, makes you feel less helpless, tolerate stress more easily, and continue to help other people.
9. Focus on those things that are in your control and influence. Try to celebrate your big and small successes, even if they seem insignificant.
10. Remember your sense of humor, even if it's black. This is a great way to change your perception of a stressful situation. For example, psychiatrists have a joke: "Whoever put on a robe today is also a psychiatrist." They say it helps to recover well at the end of a hard day.
11. Do not use alcohol or other substances for self-medication. All this brings only a temporary feeling of relief and a lot of side effects in the short and long term. Don't abuse caffeine and avoid overeating.
12. Learn relaxation techniques. It can be breathing exercises, autogenous training, methods of conscious self-observation, meditation. They help to reduce internal stress, anxiety, improve sleep, and improve physical well-being. You can do yoga, qigong, tai chi, or just swim.
13. Let the patients be just patients. A problem patient does not come specially "for your soul" - he brings his illness to you and speaks about his suffering in the ways available to him. Even if he does not know how to greet politely, demonstrates his high position, or intimidates you, his gastritis is no different from hundreds of other gastritis. Remember, you came to work earlier and have already put on your robe.
14. Get professional help. Be sure to do this if you feel that internal discomfort increases over time, your mood remains steadily low, you cannot cope with the manifestations of emotions, it becomes more and more difficult to work. Do not rush to refuse the drugs proposed by the psychotherapist for anxiety or depression. They work and effectively help to survive the acute phase of stress, chronic stress and its consequences.

To maintain confidentiality, you can contact a specialist outside your institution or get advice online. Since the beginning of the COVID-19 epidemic, dozens of state, public and private organizations provide free psychological assistance to medical workers in various forms. For example, the Cognitive-Behavioral Therapists Association of Cognitive-Behavioral Therapists is a Psychological Support Group for Healthcare Professionals working with COVID-19.