How long have you been a clinician?
Are you burnt out? Do you feel overwhelmed? Do you feel like you can do so much more but you don’t have the time?
I’ve been there.
It doesn’t matter how long you’ve done this gig, you’re bound to feel this way because of the nature of our job, and just because we’re people too with our own sets of problems. We have our own ways of coping with time constraints and problem solving in our respective settings.
In acute care, we watch our patients experience some of the hardest days of their lives. By the time they reach outpatient/home health, they are trying to cope with change and working towards PLOF. We work on their deficits and counsel them.
Who is counseling us?
How do you process the emotions you’ve collected?
Over the years I have learned some tricks to help me.
Mindfulness matters – whatever you do to get there. It all works.
Decrease anxiety – using the 5. 7. 8 breath work helps me before I go to see a patient or afterwards.
Being silly – this is more my area of expertise and I have endless tips on this. To save you some time, some of my favorites are making up songs and pranks. It keeps me from taking this all too seriously and lightening up the mood/morale at times.
Since this is mental health awareness month, and of course national speech and hearing month, what could be better than to combine the two and help ourselves, we’re worth it!
On this website you can make a mental health tool kit and obtain other helpful resources.
This is another mindfulness resource for TBI patients and clinicians.
