Career and Life Planning Guidebook for Medical Residents

Physician Wellness “Make something beautiful of your life” – Abraham Verghese, Cutting for Stone F I E L D N O T E S Ask for an hour and you’re likely to get tremendous pushback (even fromyourself!). Ask for tenminutes…. well, we all can find ten minutes somewhere in our day. There are a number of scholarly articles written on the psychology of forming healthy habits. Many of them emphasize the importance of setting yourself up for success by making realistic, defined goals that are time specific and measurable, the so-called “SMART” goals (11) . The trick for applying this to physician wellness is to spend the time you’ve designated for self-care doing something where the only purpose of that activity is taking care of yourself. Physicians are phenomenal multitaskers by nature, but if you’re multitasking, by definition, you are not focused on the actual task at hand: self-care. With time, the goal is to try to expand this habit into 20 minutes, then 30 (you get the point). Here are a few of my favorite suggestions for those ten minutes a day: At the office: At home: Practice yoga breathing Meditate Play your favorite game on your smartphone Journal Color Garden Take a walk Take a bath Use the “5-4-3-2-1” coping technique Lift weights Check in with social media Play video games Listen to your favorite musician Knit/crochet/quilt 61 WWW.PHYSICIANCAREERPLANNING.COM