How's your heart, Doc?

Abstract

A couple of weeks ago, I caught up on news with an associate before we headed into a meeting. Our chat was drawing to a close with an account of two restful weeks at a cottage with his wife and kids. As he was about to tell me precisely how long ‘the pike that got away’ was, he paused and asked, “Did you have two weeks off this year?” I mentioned a few long weekends I had enjoyed with my family and a three-day break that would soon follow a conference in Vienna, Austria. He stopped me cold: “I mean two weeks in a row”. Unable to recall such a phenomenon occurring in the past decade, I admitted that he had me snookered. Dr Lyall A Higginson Actually, I think too many of us have lodged ourselves in a corner pocket, thanks to our work ethic. The vast majority of us will not have two consecutive weeks off over the next year, and this cannot be good for our health – whether we’re talking heart, stomach, nerves or mental outlook. This is one of the many ironies of our respective callings – that we spot unhealthy stress in others while being blind to it in ourselves. But the fact is that Canada’s nurses, residents and physicians are facing severe levels of stress. We are part of a nationwide workplace time bomb, which, according to Maclean’s (October 15, 2007), is costing our economy $33 billion yearly in lost productivity and billions more in medical costs. And the sinister consequences for our own well-being are inevitable if we continue down the same path for much longer. The health care system is changing with bewildering speed in response to unprecedented growth in medical knowledge and technology. The Internet has helped to create a public that is increasingly informed about medical matters. This is now reflected in the needs and expectations that were not part of our lives 10 years ago, when our most annoying distraction might have been just a pager. Can you believe that the affliction of ‘BlackBerryitis’ has already been superseded by a new one called ‘ringxiety’, whereby addicts miss their communication devices and imagine that a phantom limb is vibrating when they are in bed or in the shower! According to Dr BJ Fogg of the Persuasive Technology Lab at Stanford University (Palo Alto, USA), such people feel that “the phone is part of them and they’re not whole without their phones”. I hope these poor souls seek counselling soon. Add to this technological invasion the effects of uncertain political and funding factors, personal issues and the troubling perception that medical practitioners who recognize that they need help are sometimes stigmatized for their foresight and courage. These are matters of concern to us all. Any well-informed person can make healthy choices, and if knowledge were the only factor determining a good outcome, health care professionals would be way ahead of the curve. But we are not. We must especially be concerned about how our community is coping with distress. Professional burnout, and alcohol and substance abuse are daily realities for us. All the same, there are many different steps we can take to turn a potentially bad situation into a positive outcome for ourselves and our patients.