Coaching – Work Life Balance
Your Journey to Inner Calm, Balance, and Productivity
Do you just wish you could get a break and get caught up with everything?
Is it becoming more and more difficult for you to keep up with the productivity pace of your peers?
Do you feel sometimes so exhausted that you have nothing left to give?
You are not alone. Many physicians feel trapped in a relentless, never-ending work and life routine. Their passion for medicine and patient care are replaced with lost control over the pace of work, agony over reimbursement cuts, and frustrations with excessive bureaucracy. They feel tired; they are more vulnerable to make medical mistakes; they are sacrificing valuable personal time for work success. They are fed up with the system and they question how much longer they will be able to keep up the pace.
In our work and research we discovered that physician burnout rates are increasing at an alarming rate, job dissatisfaction is on a rise and more and more physicians are contemplating a career change. Published online in August of 2012 in JAMA, a national survey of more than 7,000 U.S. physicians found that almost half (45.8%) admit to having at least one symptom of burnout.
But we also know and speak with many physicians who felt defeated at one time in their career and they were able to turn it around and regain their enthusiasm for medicine while making meaningful improvements in their personal lives.
Considering you are reading this, you may be at an inflection point. Perhaps, an administrator or practice manager advised you to research a program on work-life balance or performance improvement. You may contemplate cutting back hours, looking for a part-time position, a career change, a job relocation, or practice sale just because you face one or several of the below challenges:
- Long and never-ending work days:
Success comes at too big a cost. After a 10-12 hour work day in the practice you spend additional 2-3 hours at home each night charting and sometimes cursing over your new EMR. Additionally, your call schedule seems so intense that your family is used to not having you around anymore. - Irritability and complaints:
Little things get you going. Not a day goes by where you don’t feel defeated by the slightest clitches, paperwork, commitments, new rules, and changes. Your patience seems at an end, people avoid being around you and you get very little joy out of your work these days. - Lack of performance:
Your productivity is below the one of your colleagues. Even though you work hard and long hours, you just don’t seem to catch up. Your managing partner / administrator may have even advised you to get on a performance improvement plan. With all the work that lays in front of you, the last thing on your mind is productivity increase.
That is not a good place to be considering that you are interacting with so many people very day and your well-being and performance impacts the well-being and the lives of others.
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Instead imaging a life where you have:
- Relief from overwhelm and more time for self and family
Knowing how to control stress, streamline tasks and how to say “no” more often will allow you to create the space necessary to be a more compassionate physician, family member. - Freedom from frustration and complaints
You put circumstances and changes in perspective and have a framework to create shifts where you have the capacity to deal with and embrace everything that comes at you in a powerful way. Instead of feeling tired in the morning and exhausted at the end of the day, you will have the energy and time to do what you want to do. - Productivity and a renewed sense of enthusiasm for this rewarding profession
Relief from overwhelm, space to create something new and freedom from complaints will revive your enthusiasm for medicine and allow you to critically assess the effectiveness of your practice and make necessary improvements that lead to more time, better patient care, and personal fulfillment.
Do you think this can be possible? My answer is yes. These objectives are actually quite reachable when you have a simple and practical approach that provides customized support every step of the way.
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The Solution? The Physician Work Life Balance Program
This practical program gives you the insights, tools, and support to restore your energy, leverage your time and regain your performance and enthusiasm for medicine. It compiles the principles of work performance, personal well-being, balance, and collaboration with exercises, skills, methodologies and accountability.
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As a result you will experience:
- Reduced stress which leads to greater job satisfaction, less error rates, less turnover and expenses
A short supply of energy and patience leaves you vulnerable to more medical errors which impact your productivity and well-being. Once you know how to control your stress effectively (and we don’t talk about stress management here), you will automatically feel more enthused about your work which contributes to better focus, job satisfaction and reduced expenses (to fix errors and crisis). - A feeling of being more in control of your life and how you want to expand it
Right now you might not feel you have many options, and therefore automatically fall into patters of overwork that lead to more stress. As the program progresses, you’ll discover areas where you do have more control and how you can make choices that lead to improved well-being. - Improved communication and cooperation with staff, peers and family members
Stress, overwhelm, and exhaustion are the killers to every relationship. What makes this program so unique is that we not only talk about the typical topics that work-life balance programs address, such as stress control, mindfulness and self-care, but we also address skills to communicate more effectively with your staff, peers and family. Once you know the communication subtleties you automatically will free up time because you don’t have to go back and “fix” what you messed up with your impatient and sometimes even improper way of communication. - A sense of work-life balance and personal well-being
Work is part of life but not life itself. In this program we will brainstorm ways to restore your work-life balance and to take better care of yourself. After all, your way of living has an impact on your patients and your staff and you want to ensure that you are a role model for healthy and balanced living. - Improved performance and energy
Once you feel you are regaining control over your life again, your work performance will automatically improve. What takes you x number of minutes right now will take you only a fragment after participation in this program. What you used to do yourself, you now have the communication tools to delegate the task effectively to others.
Further benefits include:
- More time for people and activities that matter to you
- Improved relationships with peers, staff and family
- A sense of control over your life
- A greater impact you leave on your patients
- Improved quality of life
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What makes this program so effective?
Holistic approach – Most work-life balance focus just on the personal life piece since that is typically the “neglected” area of most physicians. Our coaching program focuses on your personal life as well as on the effectiveness of your professional life. After all, we don’t want you to make less money or give up your profession. We provide you the support and tools to be effective and successful in both areas based on what matters to you.
Transformative learning – You probably attended a workshop or read books on work-life balance already but didn’t get the intended outcomes. Rather than giving you more information, something to study and learn, transformative learning takes away what’s in the way of you being powerful, effective and balanced with the knowledge you already have; leaving you in action producing breakthroughs that dramatically expand the quality of your everyday life.
Personalized attention – You will develop the skills that are most meaningful, useful, and effective to you. You’re able to get immediate feedback on your actions, which help you build your confidence and momentum to become one of the most balanced and effective physician in your organization and a loveable family member.
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What you will receive with the Physician Work-Life Balance Program
Phase 1: Before the program:
You will engage in a conversation with the coach to learn about the program, clarify your goals and clearly identify your measures for success. Additionally, you will be led through an assessment process to heighten your self-awareness and identify the areas for transformation.
Phase 2: The Program
The feedback of the personal assessment creates the customized agenda of this program and an approximate time length. Depending on the level of support, previous participants took 3-6 months to conclude this program and achieve the desired objectives.
Customized to your situation and goals, we will explore a variety of topics such as:
- Stress control
- Strengthen boundaries
- Simplify life – create space
- Communication skills
- Conflict resolution
- Work-life balance
- Success
- Work performance and productivity
- Environment design
- Self-care
These topics will be covered in 2-4 coaching conversations each month which can be held in person (Atlanta area), via phone or Skype.
Phase 3: After the Program
6 months after completion of the program you will have a follow-up session with your coach to share progress, possible questions and future goals.
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Is the Physician Work-Life Balance program a good fit for you?
The Physician Work Life Balance program is the best investment you can make in your life and future if you can check off one or more of the below symptoms:
- You feel tired and increasingly frustrated with almost everything.
- You recently made a serious medical mistake due to exhaustion and overwork; now you feel even more stressed.
- Your work performance and effectiveness have dropped recently.
- You feel overwhelmed by all the responsibilities and commitments that are resting on your shoulders.
- You fear that you could burn out in the near future or
- Your family life is already at stake due to your frequent absence.
Suck it up and deal with it is not the answer anymore. There are effective and proven tools available for you right here to get the relief and to regain a life full of enthusiasm, success and personal well-being.
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Here’s how to find out more
If you have read this far and you think you might be interested in the program, I invite you to a complimentary work-life balance strategy session. This is a no-obligation way to find out more about the program and whether it’s right for you.
In this session we will explore your unique situation, what kind of results you would like to create in the near future and whether this program may be of help or not. Whatever the outcome, you will leave the conversation with more clarity and enthusiasm about what’s possible.
The conversation will take about an hour and can be done in person, by phone, or Skype. Fill out the contact form below and I will be in contact with you within the next 24-48 hours.
I look forward to hearing from you,
Iris Grimm
Comments or questions are welcome.