Physicians Can Reduce Stress Through Completions

To thrive in a medical practice throughout your career and during your life, while experiencing less stress, it is vital to understand the power of "completions." Ultimately, everything becomes complete. Every pile on your desk, in one way or the other, will cease to exist in time. The piles will diminish because you've acted on them; or there is an earthquake and the building collapses; or because someone takes over your office when you move on, are replaced, or die.

The light bulbs in your lights will burn out in 700 to 800 hours just as your car's water pump will give out in three years. Jupiter will complete a revolution around the sun in 11.9 years. A tortoise on the Galapagos Islands will draw its last breath, on average, in about 100 years. Cro-Magnon man lasted about 30,000 years. Dinosaurs ruled the earth for a couple of 100 million years, and the sun's remaining life is about five billion years. Humankind will come to a completion at some point. All things come to completion.

From small acorns

As simple as it seems, when you awake each morning, you have completed sleep for that night. When you handle all of the day's patient appointments, that is a completion. Simply putting away the dishes or taking out the garbage are completions that yield benefits. Large or small, completions provide a mental and emotional break. They help you to feel better.

You can continually gain completions in every area of your life. They can be achieved on multi-year projects, or activities that only last a few seconds. Achieving completions is energizing because it offers a clean end to activities or even thoughts, and a good beginning for what's next.

Completions all around

To understand how you can put the power of completions to work for you in your everyday life, let's look at the example of Megan. Megan was the office manager in a mid-sized medical practice.

In years past, Megan thought it was enough to get through the day with no patient complaints, keep her files updated, and minimize the buildup of small tasks. Previously, Megan would tie up loose ends every few days, if then.

Recognizing the power of completions, however, Megan built proofing and formatting her daily and weekly reports into her schedule. She also constantly updated her files, completed patient forms, cost data, and invoices. She even streamlined her surroundings, and filed items frequently rather than allowing buildup.

By viewing all aspects of her job as a unit, Megan was able to leave the office most days feeling a greater sense of achievement, and often she was clear mentally and emotionally by the time she reached her car. She felt good about her accomplishments and was energized for the next day to get started on what came next.