Signs of Burnout
- Stressful workload
- Not enough sleep
- No recognition
- No work-life balance
- No feedback
- No coaching
- No meaning
Signs of Mental Health
- Noticeable change in your personality, sleep schedule or eating pattern
- Inability to perform daily activities
- Withdrawing from social or normal activities
- Frequent and intense mood swings
- Prolonged feelings of anxiety, anger, sadness or depression
- Substance abuse
- Thoughts about suicide or harm to others
Resilience Tips to Prevent Burnout and Mental Health
The more you can cultivate resilience and decrease your risk of burnout, the better you will be able to take care of your patients as well as yourself.
- Personal resiliency
- Bring joy in work: what is really meaningful in my life?
- Proactive self-care: what do I want to do for myself?
- Promote self-compassion: you are doing the best you can in an unprecedented situation, it’s OK to take breaks when you need
- Improve efficiency and resources: redesign workflow, who is part of my healthcare team that can give me support in difficult times?
- Social community support
- Healthcare organization: enhance staff well-being in culture, values, programs that supported staff with cultivation of resilience through cognitive behavioral training, health counselling, communication skill building, relaxation training, music therapy, and other such measures were able to decrease levels of emotional exhaustion.
- Medical social network: shared mission, knowledge, resources and support each other in accomplishing the professional success in healthcare
- Telehealth platform: as a doctor, you will be much better off if you have control of work hours, patient consultation lengths, and the number of patients you are expected to see daily. You will also be more likely to thrive if you have a voice in changes at the institutional level. Therefore, it may be worth it to think about the relative value of time versus money; one option is to live more frugally in exchange for more freedom to spend time the way you would like.
