Show notes
Below are the episode show notes and transcript. Some episode transcripts have been edited more than others, but they are up in the meantime to help those who would rather read and for searchability on the web. Extensive editing has not been prioritized as I seek to both produce regular content and maintain my own wellness. Enjoy!
Show Notes
What do you hope for? Your team to win the big game? Or is it something bigger than that…Connection? Love? Purpose? Meaningful work?
Check this episode to hear how to encourage your patients, your colleagues, and yourself today!
Get home faster with 10 tips from my free guide, Maximize Your Clinical Efficiency! Click to get your guide NOW!
Today’s Sponsor: YNAB (You Need A Budget) Sign up through this link to get 1 month free!
Transcript
What do you hope for? A particular gift? A promotion? A better call schedule? A restored relationship? You may struggle to hold on to hope, but I want you to know that you are not alone in that stick around to hear how each of us can help others. Hold on to hope in challenging times.
Welcome to the MedEdWell podcast, where physicians get empowered to take the next step in their wellness, personally, professionally, and financially. I’m your host, Dr. Ryan Stegink, a practicing general pediatrician and online entrepreneur.
Thank you so much for joining me here on another episode of the MedEdWell podcast we’re already on episode 21. Thank you so much for listening or reviewing for sharing these episodes. If you are wanting to put some of these things into practice and are hoping to get home from work sooner with your work done, check out my free guide. It’s a PDF entitled, maximizing your clinical efficiency, and it has 10 of my tips for getting your work done at work, head on over to mededwell.com/efficiencyguide to get your copy today, then let me know what you think, how things went as you tried to implement these.
I’ve found them helpful in my own clinical practice, and I’m still training to learn and grow. So I’m open to feedback today. We’ll be talking about hope, why we need it, how to support one another in medicine before we get into the rest of today’s episode, let’s hear from today’s sponsor. Each of us need to know about money, but it’s not always taught. Budgeting can sound boring and restrictive, but it’s just a spending plan. You need a budget or YNAB has a mobile app, an online web portal, secure connections to many financial institutions, even two factor authentication to keep your finances secure. I personally use wine a for my family’s finances, even after never planning to switch from my prior service, sign up at the link in the show notes to get one month free. All right, now, back to today’s show.
So hope, it’s about looking forward. I hope for…fill in the blank. For me growing up, I would hope for things for Christmas or my birthday and I’m might or might not get it hope is play placing expectations on someone or something for an outcome. Something that we desire, something that we hope would happen, but we may have little or no control over. For instance, I hope the Chicago bears will win the super bowl, but I don’t see it happening this year. We hope that we’ll get home from work on time that our family member recovers from their illness that we match in our desired specialty, that we have a healthy baby that we find a significant other for any number of other things personally, or professionally for us, our community, our world, when these things are threatened and certain or taken away, it’s easy to lose the big picture to lose hope in those moments.
We need to encourage our patients, our colleagues, and ourselves, because we need encouragement and community as human beings. So how can you support holding onto hope? Number one, encourage your patients. Practicing empathic, listening, that motivational interviewing stuff we talked about. It really can help with the medical needs, but also some of the physical and other social determinants of health being sensitive to their hopes and their needs. They may be different than yours. This goes beyond just the diagnosis, the medications plan. It’s seeing patients as humans, mothers, fathers, sisters, sons, friends, and then really making them feel heard and seen. So how can you support hope first, encourage your patients. Second, encourage your colleagues and your staff. You need to check in with them. How are you really asking and being willing to listen? If they say, actually, thanks for asking. I’m really having a hard time today or this week or this month.
And it may mean being vulnerable yourself, not just brushing past these potential connections with I’m fine. Thanks. And you, it also includes listening well. Wow. That’s a really hard situation you had to deal with, or just not interjecting and giving a safe space to talk, encouraging your colleagues and staff, maybe offering to help. Would it be helpful if I took the next admission? So you have some time to process, which is happened on that code situation. So again, how can you support hope? Number one, encouraging your patients. Number two, encouraging your colleagues and staff and number three, encouraging yourself. I know for me, it’s easy to complain and it’s easy to get into negative self talk. Sometimes we need to help ourselves refocus to reframe the situation. I need to remind myself, what do I have to be thankful for today? I’ve tried to start a gratitude practice, just journaling two or three things at the end of each day that I feel thankful for that I know are things that are positive in my life, or may have been hard, but I’ve learned something from.
So is there something that you can encourage yourself with that you can look forward to to hope for? And these things are also helpful for those who are not in medicine, but who are supporting someone who is maybe a family member, a friend, significant other, or otherwise it could be that you check in on them and encourage them in their unique challenges, being a part of the medical community, whether it’s residency, fellowship, medical school, being an attending, these things are, are hard. And having that human connection and people checking in on them can be really helpful. It could also be reminding these medical professionals of things that they do have to be thankful for. And maybe it’s offering to make dinner for them or plan on an event after a big test is done to celebrate. We all need each other, both within medicine and connections outside of medicine.
It’s so a important these connections. I want you to take a moment and reflect on these things. Imagine if you did some of them, what change can you make today to encourage someone, even yourself? We all need that encouragement to be able to take our next step and figure out what or who we are hoping for. Hoping in looking forward to when times are tough or uncertain, encourage someone around you today and take that next step in supporting hope and wellness.
I want to to thank you all for joining me here on another episode of the MedEdWell podcast. This has been an encouragement to you. Please take a moment and share this episode with another physician, leave us a review, please really help us get the word out and help more people find out about how to take the next step in their wellness. Again, you’re looking for some efficiency tips to help you get your work done, to get home faster, head over to MedEdWell.com/efficiencyguide. And if you’re looking for a new budgeting tool, check out YNAB at the link in the show notes and get a free month. I just want you to know that this has been a really encouraging opportunity for me to not only try and serve you, but also to learn more about myself and to take the next step in my wellness. So until next time, take that next step. Thanks for all you do, and have a great day.