STRESS MANAGEMENT TECHNIQUES For Healthcare Professionals

One of the things I believe we don't speak enough about in healthcare is clinician anxiety. So in this video I'm going to show you the most common types of clinician anxiety according to my view and so that by the end of this video you will know how to fix it. And this is coming from my education in mental health care and my experience from over 14 years Whether you are new in healthcare or you've been working for a while we all get anxious from time to time. So look, working in healthcare there are so many things that are outside of our control right now. Just looking back at the pandemic I can see really how anyone would disagree with that. And looking at the current state of healthcare and into the near future of healthcare we have an aging population, we have increasing kind of unmet medical demand and of course we cannot forget the struggles because of decreased funding. However, instead of dwelling on these factors and things outside of our control I always like to turn to what we can control and that is ourselves. As soon as we as individuals have an increased self-awareness and know how to handle our own struggles it's also way easier to help our patients and actually our colleagues to do the same thing. Let's start by looking at many healthcare professionals most common type of clinician anxiety or how it manifests in our day-to-day life at work. The first one, the one that I have painfully felt so many times, is not getting results for my patients. Or even worse is making the patients worse or the fear of making them worse. The second thing which of course is very closely related to that is saying the wrong thing or doing the wrong thing, choosing the wrong intervention or choosing the wrong thing to do. Or even worse like not even knowing what to say or what to do. This is especially present in mental healthcare in my experience. The third thing is not fully understanding the problem of the patient or feeling that it's outside of my specialty or outside of my knowledge. But overall the difficulties and the struggles with feeling that the patients and perhaps even their relatives expectations of you as a healthcare worker can feel basically impossible to meet. And one common related problem what I've seen is we put way too much emphasis on what method or intervention to use instead of focusing on the relationship and the alliance building with the patient and the patient's relatives in some cases. But that's understandable because we are so drilled into evidence-based practices and of course we want to be sure that the methods we use they have the wanted effect, right? But whatever method and intervention we choose they can never ever compensate for the fears in us as professionals in healthcare. And honestly I surely didn't want to acknowledge that because I didn't always have the type of workplace culture that allowed that type of dialogues between colleagues and also speaking up to your closest manager, to the leaders in the team because you feel like you directly expose your weaknesses and your shortcomings. But okay compliance to treatment is key and we can't really fully help the patients without being advocates for change in ourselves. That's my own honest opinion and my view and it's just a view so if you don't agree that's fine. But this basically comes down to that everything we do is about change management. It might be new lifestyle choices, it might be new medications for our patients, pre or post intervention care somehow whether that would be inpatient or outpatient or even for the patient and their relatives themselves in the comfort of their own home. We still need to motivate compliance to treatment or compliance to any type of rehabilitation intervention or whatever. So leading your patient towards positive change however small the change might be we know that's crucial and for that to happen we must build trust and build an alliance with the patient and for that to happen we must not only be open to change in ourselves but consistently improving ourselves too. And of course I'm not talking like we need this radical life-changing stuff every day. I'm talking the small consistent action steps that of course compound over time. Because as a healthcare worker you truly are your most valuable tool when working with patients and I actually believe we underestimate that sometimes. So what is missing then? Well if we get to the point it's clear that the logical answer is self-care but if someone would have told me you have to prioritize self-care when I was like the most stressed and most depressed in my career I surely wouldn't listen to anything they would say. First of all it doesn't make any sense to just say and claim self-care is important but also because I felt like I have all the education in psychiatric care, in social work, even in criminology and I still don't know myself how to do it. So that also felt like a yeah basically being exposed to my own shortcomings. So I know I wouldn't listen but just bear with me here because once you know your triggers and you know your thought patterns and your fears, the ones that lead to the type of clinician anxiety or the type of anxiety that you have, then you also know how to work with that and you can work through that. We humans are craving human interactions and we are craving connections and for those connections to be constructive we as workers in mental health care and in healthcare we need the mental and emotional resilience ourselves. I don't know if you have experience like me by spending the morning telling a patient or their relatives that we thought we could yet it wasn't enough or something went wrong, we don't know why it happened or even if we do know why it happened we are going to look into it not happening again. I have done my fair share of talking with patients and relatives after actually catastrophic but preventable events and it's really never any fun and there is not much that can prepare you for that and it doesn't become easier if you do it many times. So it's easy to understand that this takes a lot of effort and demands a stable mind as well as a supportive workplace environment but also if we look at what we are supposed to do just looking back I wish someone would have told me basically already during my time in university studying psychiatric care what I'm supposed to do about it and given some specific tips something that actually works because honestly the term self-care doesn't mean anything or at least it didn't mean anything to me. I didn't know what I was supposed to do and also everything doesn't work for everyone. So here are some of the things that I've found works really well and are super efficient effective. First thing is demand debriefing sessions because they are in my experience severely underrated. I mean we use them a lot in mental health care but I still think it's underutilized. It must be scheduled and it cannot pop up whenever someone asks for them because the willingness to ask for this type of debriefing sessions it should be included in the in the planning of everyone's schedule. And the next thing something I feared the most is role play but if you aren't practicing and role playing with your colleagues you are seriously missing out. Playing out different scenarios together with a colleague or preferably many colleagues and even a supervisor just to practice practice and practice to over learn and you must do that while you are not in a stressful scenario and it prepares us for those moments when stress and high pressure just cannot be avoided. I mean we also know how important simulations are in acute care and actually it's not less of importance when it comes to talking with patients and bringing bad news bringing good news and simply just preparing for shared decision making. So to sum things up we need to prepare and actually train our empathy because also on on the side note who who would want to meet a cold stone faced clinician anyways but that could be a coping mechanism for us as professionals but no one wants to meet that. And debriefing sessions please it must be on the schedule so just demand that and not only when needed because we need to increase the willingness to ask for help before and after stressful situations. And this also brings me to the next advice that I wish I had earlier on in my career in it's simple grounding techniques mindfulness and visualization exercises that something that I can do quickly I can just go into the bathroom between patient meetings or during my lunch break or something like that I need something that works fast instantly something that I can do without having to take a full walk around the neighborhood. And one pretty simple grounding technique or just to calm down and to become more present and more mindful is the one where you just follow your fingers along the line of your hands like this and you focus your attention to your fingertips not on the hand. So this takes some practice because what you focus on the first thing you focus on is normally this hand but you should do the opposite you should focus on your fingertips and what you are feeling is that this it brings you really back to the present moment it's an excellent exercise and it's something you can do where you don't have to fear looking weird in front of someone else. And then simple exercises like hugging ourselves feeling our physical boundaries this type of exercise holding ourselves and of course so many different breathing exercises one of my favorites to bring yourself also into the present moment a bit more is two quick inhales one long exhale. Another thing is shaking and that one is actually it's it can be quite uh yeah in the beginning I felt so cringy just thinking about doing that but I know it works and I just get into the bathroom and I do it there for breathing exercises you can find so many different tips online just search for it and find something that you feel suits you and when it comes to visualization exercises I would like to go more in depth into some really powerful ones that are used by psychologists and therapists all over the world but I'll cover that in an upcoming video. Okay so we've covered quite a lot here today so uh let's wrap things up with some tasking. I would like you to write down your biggest fears and rate them from 1 to 10 where 10 is the worst possible fear. So which ones of the one I mentioned in the beginning did you resonate the most? Let's recap. First one is not getting results for your patients and the closest related one is making the patients worse. Second one is saying or doing the wrong thing and closely related to that is not knowing what to say or what to do. And the third and last one is not fully understanding the problem of the patient or feeling that it's outside of your expertise or your specialty. Yeah rate that. What is your score? Follow that score in the upcoming few days for example and look at what you can specifically do to reduce that score and now I'm talking only about small action steps that you can commit to do every single day like those type of exercises that I mentioned or if you want to do something else and then watch your score going down. So that's actually very important to measure it each and every day and following it going down. Watch it when it goes down. As a final point to this video if you are a healthcare leader manager and you want to improve the workplace culture and the job satisfaction for your employees, better outcomes for your patients, so all in all saving a whole lot of money, give me a call via the link down below. Let's see where you're at at this moment and where you want your organization to be within the next few months if that's something you would like some one-on-one help with. And until the next time otherwise see ya!