All blog posts for December 2011

Managing your Mental and Spiritual Energy, for physicians

a physician water-squirting his pager

This is a continuation of my thoughts on “Manage Your Energy, Not Your Time,” by Tony Schwartz and Catherine McCarthy, as published in the Harvard Business Review. The first series in the post dealt with physical energy, the second, on emotional energy.

Mental Energy

Reduce interruptions by performing high-concentration tasks away from phones and emails.
Respond to voice mails and emails at designated times during the day.
Every night, identify the most important challenge for the next day. Then make it your first priority when you arrive at work in the morning.

This is nearly impossible on the wards since so many people want to page you. I did, at one point, try using a Bluetooth headset on my cell phone so that I could answer phone calls more efficiently. I noticed that the more efficient residents would enter in orders, write notes, and present cases (i.e. multitask) during rounds. The point that the authors try to make is to emphasize how important it is to reduce clutter, and it relates to a condition one psychiatrist, Dr. Edward Hallowell, has labeled attention deficit trait.

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Manage Your Emotional Energy as a Physician

Defuse negative emotions — irritability, impatience, anxiety, insecurity — through deep abdominal breathing.
Fuel positive emotions in yourself and others by regularly expressing appreciation to others in detailed, specific terms through notes, emails, calls, or conversations.
Look at upsetting situations through new lenses. Adopt a “reverse lens” to ask, “What would the other person in this conflict say, and how might he be right?” Use a “long lens” to ask, “How will I likely view this situation in six months? ” Employ a “wide lens” to ask, “How can I grow and learn from this situation?”

Renewing emotional energy is harder to accomplish when on a high-stress high-stakes service like internal medicine or surgery. read more→

Manage Your Energy, Not Your Time: managing physical energy in healthcare

Harvard Business Review: On Managing Yourself

The Harvard Business Review magazine often features articles detailing techniques for personal improvement based on more rigorous scientific research and analyses of successful organizations and leaders. One of the articles featured in its recently-published compilation On Managing Yourself, “Manage Your Energy, Not Your Time,” focuses on improving yourself by managing energy instead of prioritizing and stressing about time management. The four dimensions of personal energy include physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual, which I’ll tie in this post and subsequent posts. I’ll cover the article’s highlights, and tie it in to make it more relevant to healthcare professionals:

Physical Energy

Authors Tony Schwartz and Catherine McCarthy summarize their techniques along these points:

Enhance your sleep by setting an earlier bedtime and reducing alcohol use.
Reduce stress by engaging in cardiovascular activity at least three times a week and strength training at least once.
Eat small meals and light snacks every three hours.
Learn to notice signs of imminent energy flagging, including restlessness, yawning, hunger, and difficulty concentrating.
Take brief but regular breaks away from your desk, at 90- to 120- minute intervals throughout the day.

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Exploring healthcare ventures with other physicians at FreelanceMD's Med Fusion 2011 conference

Medical Fusion 2011 Conference

There are so many possibilities for new medicine-related ventures that it’s hard to define and pin down all the options. Enrolling at my school’s MBA program (at the University of California, Irvine) was my first step towards nailing those options down. UC Irvine has allowed me to hear from executives such as Rick Afable, MD, the CEO of Hoag Hospital and how he’s transitioning the organization towards a more vertically-oriented system. I’ve taken courses from non-clinical physicians like Sherri Treasurywala, MD PhD MBA, who worked for a high-profile consulting firm. UCI’s Brand Management class gave me the chance to meet restauranteurs like Wing Lam, CEO of Wahoo’s Fish Tacos. And I’m not done exploring — I’ve got 2 more quarters left in 2012 to explore the politics of healthcare, entrepreneurship, and (if time allows) consumer behavior.

To my surprise, online websites have allowed physicians with new ventures to post their thoughts. One such website, FreelanceMD, puts on annual conference, the Medical Fusion Conference, linking physicians (and healthcare providers (and medical students!)) together. Gregory Bledsoe, MD, formerly an emergency medicine attending physician at Johns Hopkins, graciously allowed me to attend the Medical Fusion Conference in Las Vegas. Interestingly, but not surprising, at least 25% of the attendees wanted to leave medicine entirely.

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