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Do you quit work? At least until it’s time to be back in the office, clinic, shop or hospital? Are you constantly taking calls and texts from work even on vacation?
Recreational travel may increase creativity by relieving workers from stress, providing diversifying experiences and increasing positive emotions. Consequently, vacations may boost creativity, apparent in a greater variety (flexibility) and originality of ideas after work resumption. de Bloom et al
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As you walked through the front doors at work yesterday what were your expectations? Were you hoping:
Which was it? How did you feel at the end of the day? How do you think those who interacted with you felt at the end of the day?
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You may face may challenges or have an unexpected outcome following your interaction with your customer, client or patient. As a healthcare professional these are opportunities to reflect on how an event unfolded, how you were feeling at the time and how you are feeling afterwards. Consider then how those emotions play out through the course of the day. Given that most outcomes in healthcare are moderated by an interaction with a health professional it is important to ensure that the health professional is attuned to their inner world. We can’t change many things as providers of health services but we can look within.
Know what causes your negative emotions, and which types of feelings you face most often. When those emotions begin to appear, immediately start your strategy to interrupt the cycle. The longer you wait, the harder it will be to pull yourself away from negative thinking. Mindtools
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Try this experiment. If you are tending to overweight ( Body Mass Index (BMI) 25 or over) then try to get to BMI 18.5 -24.9. If you succeed people will decide you have lost ‘too much weight’ even when your BMI is in the middle of the normal range. If normal was defined as ‘what is most common’ then to have a ‘normal’ BMI is unusual and we may have become blind to normal so that what we perceive as ‘normal’ is not ideal. Rates of overweight and obesity are now at 60-70%.
In an Australian study on the public perception of body size the authors report that:
Overweight participants were also most likely to incorrectly identify themselves as a healthy weight (67 per cent, p<0.001), compared to 12 per cent of obese participants . The majority (89 per cent) of normal weight participants accurately identified themselves as being a healthy weight. Flanagan et al
Therefore it is not surprising that when people are challenged about their weight in healthcare they are reluctant to identify the issue as a problem.
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Before making any changes that might improve outcomes where you work you have to notice things that don’t look quite right or that hint at a solution. I know someone who notices the tiniest details even when she is out shopping. She generates a huge number of ideas about how things could be improved sometimes with the smallest tweaks. Here’s an example. As a result she is the most successful person I know. You’d be lucky to have her on your side. I know I am. What did you notice about your office, clinic, shop or hospital today?
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Imagine you have back pain. Your doctor suggests you need special scan. You have to travel an hour across town to get to the hospital where you have an appointment at 9 am. You take the morning off but hope you might get to work in the afternoon. It’s peak hour traffic as you arrive at the hospital. The queue to get into the car park stretches down the street. You join the line of cars and realise it’s now 8.45am. The X-ray department is a long walk from the car park. Just as you get to the entrance to the parking lot the attendant indicates that it is full and you have to try and get a spot on a side street. The chap in the car behind you is getting frustrated- are you waiting in the queue or trying to back out? It’s a one way street you can’t turn the car here. It’s now 9 am you are going to be late- not sure how late. You toy with the idea of just going home.
In November 2011, an editorial in the Canadian Medical Association Journal called hospital parking fees a barrier to health care, saying the charges amount to “parking-centred health care,” and recommended hospitals stop charging patients for parking. The editorial stirred up a debate in the media. The Ontario Nurses’ Association, for one, agreed with the recommendation and noted that many of its members could tell stories about patients who had avoided seeking care or had cut appointments because of high parking costs. Canadian Nurse
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Before a surgeon gets anywhere near a patient in the operating theatre he must wash his hands, put on a gown and gloves. He then drapes the patient and cleans the skin. As he makes his first incision there is no mobile phone on the table, he banishes all distractions and appreciates that the job isn’t over until he has sutured the wound. Whatever you do for a living how do you approach the job? If you adopted rituals would you perform better? Bacteria can destroy a surgeons work. What contaminates your work and how does that manifest in your results?
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Do you know why your customer, client or patient chose you today? If you are his doctor John made an appointment this morning because he thinks he may have an inherited illness. His uncle recently died from this condition and it all started with weakness in his arm. John has noticed that he has pain and weakness in his right arm when he lifts heavy things at work. This morning he nearly dropped the kettle when making a cup of tea. He isn’t going to tell you what he is worried about but he expects you will tell him he doesn’t have that condition after all the tests you will perform right? His uncle had lots of blood tests and scans.
In quite a number of contacts with a new reason for an encounter (22%), the ideas, concerns, or expectations of the patient remain undisclosed. A second main finding is that the expression of concerns and/or expectations is correlated with fewer prescriptions (univariate, logistic regression analysis, and also after exclusion of patients without an ‘a priori need for medication’). Although the causal relationship remains uncertain, the observations may indicate that systematically disclosing the patients’ real expectations and concerns could lead to less medication use. Matthys et al
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It’s Friday evening. Your customer, client or patient needs something. You’ve been trying to arrange it or get the necessary authorisation over the phone and now you’ve been put on hold listening to musac. You had advised this person in all good faith that what they need to make a decision will be here today. The minutes tick by and then the phone goes dead. The queue of people waiting is growing longer. A tired child is screaming somewhere nearby and you are already running late.
Over 54% of physicians report a loss of enthusiasm for work, feelings of cynicism, and a low sense of personal accomplishment. The number is up 10% from just three years ago. Who is to blame? If you ask many physicians, the fault lies among leaders involved in healthcare finance, policy and clinical administration. Sachin Jain
You can choose your reaction to the trial by phone on Friday evening. This scenario is not uncommon and as a doctor it won’t be the first or last time you will experience it. Yet each time it happens it may evoke the same negative emotions until you choose otherwise
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Are you aware what your facial muscles are doing when you are engaged in conversation? What about your neck and your shoulders? What do they leak about your mood? Your attitude? Your perspective? Is it possible they are sending entirely the wrong message?
Even though, there was no evidence found that displaying positive facial expression will increase the level of follower trust in their leader (both, affectively and cognitively) and their perceptions of leadership effectiveness, still the opposite was found to be true, which is a negative relationship between negative facial expressions and leadership effectiveness. This means, that the more the leader expresses negative facial cues such as lowered eyebrows and lip corners down, the less effective he or she is.
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