Are you on the road to burnout?
By Angelica Redleaf, DC

Do you enjoy your work? Do you love going to the office? Do you love the thrill of treating new patients and the excitement from activity in the office? Do these “loves” qualify as an addiction or are they leading you to burnout? Let’s take a closer look.

Working hard (translation: working extraordinarily long hours) in a profession that involves helping people, such as chiropractic, comes with special strokes from society. Many large organizations reward workaholics — and actually seek them in their recruitment process.

In healthcare organizations, working long hours suggests dedication and seems to be an indication that we care about our patients.

But time is a limited resource. We only have 24 hours in a day, and we need to distribute our activities judiciously so that we take care of our own needs and health in terms of time with family, friends, participating in leisure activities, resting, sleeping, and even growing as a human and as a professional. And we need to think about our future. Most of us will be practicing for many years and it is essential to be on the lookout for balance in our practice.

When working long hours puts us out of balance so that some of our needs cannot be met or are ignored, overwork may fall into the category of an addiction. At the very least, it can burn you out.

How can you know if you have become a workaholic and may be on the road to burnout? Some clues include:

• Family members or even friends let you know either directly or indirectly that you seem to be more work-oriented than they want, or they complain that you do not spend enough time with them or may not be taking care of yourself;

• You engage in activities that are work-related most of the time;

• You feel guilty for not spending more time with friends and family, but cannot stop yourself;

• You become obsessed with work. It is “all” you can think about or talk about.

This last point — being obsessed with work — is important. The obsession can rob you of fully being with others even when you are with them physically. And that is a sign that things are really out of control.

It’s not easy to compartmentalize the day into predetermined parts, dedicated to family and friends, yourself, and work. Balancing life’s activities is sometimes challenging, because at some stages in our life, work does demand more time, especially when building a practice.

How can you tell if you are spending too much time working? Here is general guide. Remember: It is just a guide, but it is something to think about:

• New in practice. If your mind is on work more than 50 percent of the time when you are away from your practice, you just may have the beginnings of a problem! Your life outside of the practice may be suffering or you may be incurring more stress than necessary.

• In practice 5-10 years. Your mind should ideally not escape to work-related thoughts more than 25 percent of the time.

• In practice more than 10 years. You should be able to disengage from work most of the time when you leave the clinic each day, unless a crisis intervenes or when you are making needed changes to the office or to your procedures and/or staffing.

Think about your health and well-being over the long haul. If you continue with an imbalanced way of life, will you be well in both mind, spirit, and body and have an intact family and social life for the next 25, 30, or 40 years?

If the answer is no, please consider making any necessary changes. You and your patients deserve it.

Angelica Redleaf, DC, has been in practice in Providence, R.I., since 1978. She is the author of Behind Closed Doors: Gender, Sexuality & Touch in the Doctor/Patient Relationship (1998) and is an instructor on boundary training for ChiroEcoCE.com. She welcomes questions that may be appropriate to answer in this column. She can be contacted at angelchiro@aol.com.