How Healthcare Professionals Can Re-Invent Themselves After Going Through Burnout

All right, Aaron, looks like we're live. How are you doing today, my friend?

I'm doing excellent, and I'm excited about today's topic.

Yeah, I mean, this is something that I have experienced myself, so it makes me excited and also, you know, reflective in the conversation we're going to have today. So burnout is our topic, and it's something that unfortunately runs rampant in so many different professions. However, in healthcare, especially after what everyone has been through over the last two years, I think it's even more prevalent as an issue. And I don't think the system and the people were really, really ready for the onslaught of challenges that presented themselves. However, there was a small group of people who were ready and who were actually thriving under these conditions because they had prepared their business not knowing Covid was going to happen, but just in having systems in place that allowed them to grow and expand and scale. And others were on the brink of burnout, and they kind of, you know, burned to ashes, so to speak. And if that's you, if you're listening to this, we're going to talk about early signs of burnout. We're going to talk about, you know, what you can do if you are going through that burnout and identify with it. And if you feel burnt out, you know, what are some things that you can do to reinvent yourself and rise like a phoenix from the ashes, as they say. So I'd like to start with asking you questions. Question, Aaron, have you experienced professional burnout or felt like you were heading in that direction at all?

I think luckily, professionally, I never felt like I was burning out, but definitely over the last couple years, because of the pandemic and just the situation, I felt burnt out because I was working all the time inside my house. And, you know, it was funny to experience burnout in that situation when you think, oh, I'm at home, you know, I have all this convenience. But what I found was I was actually not taking, like, not realizing that I needed connection more than I thought I did, not being able to travel, see family. So I think there's different ways burnout can manifest. So for me personally, I felt like emotionally and spiritually burnt out just because of feeling a little bit isolated and just not having boundaries in my day, you know, I didn't have to go to an office, but it was still challenging because you don't have to go to an office and you essentially work all the time, right? I know. Same for my wife. She doesn't. She's not in healthcare, but she found that she was adding another three hours in her evening before bed to get more done. So for me personally, that's the most recent experience of near burnout. I wouldn't say burnt out. Luckily I've learned some tools.

Yeah. And I know we're going to dive a little bit deeper into that. So you actually shared with us a study that was talking about medical burnout. So let's dive into that. What did the study have to say about burnout in the healthcare profession?

Yeah, so there's a couple things that came up following the headlines. One of them was that the association of American Medical Colleges reports burnout alone could cause a significant shortage of physicians by 2034. That is a sign that it's not going to be good for the practitioners, it's not going to be great for patients and people who need care. Doing a little bit more research. There's a yearly study on burnout and depression in the medical field. Every year they track how many doctors are feeling severe burnout or low level depression. And it's up from 42% in 2020, 21 up to 47% this year. I'm not surprised, like we're not surprised that there's more physicians feeling burnt out. And I've just talked to someone yesterday who had, who essentially chose to leave medicine because she just didn't want to handle, they just couldn't handle the burnout after a long career. And she said she wants to focus more on and helping people with their health. So we're seeing people move away from the conventional model for their own well being. It's not that they don't love helping people, it's just they physically can't handle it anymore. So it's very sad. It's a very sad situation.

Yeah. And that's really important for us to recognize that we've created a healthcare system, while wonderful in so many ways, doesn't necessarily take the, the, the staff into account. Right. Like that's the thing. Like if you're, if your million dollar racehorses are these practitioners and nurses and team members to deliver care, if they don't have tools to take good care of themselves, then they're not going to win races. Right. They're not going to win championships, so to speak. And eventually if they don't have the tools to take care of themselves, then you're going to lose these staff. And these are highly trained, you know, highly committed, motivated, inspiring people who are, you know, very well educated as well and, and equipped to serve others. But they're not equipped to serve themselves, or at least the system isn't equipped to necessarily serve themselves. And, you know, that, you know, the last two years have kind of really shined a microscope or a magnifying glass on. On that issue. And unfortunately, you know, we've. With everything that's happened and as well as people have been over the last two years and the stress that's been placed on the system, it's kind of bursting at the seams, right? And so a lot of people were just, like, pushed to the edge, and maybe some people were already there, and this was like a tipping point for them. So hats off to all the healthcare practitioners that have been showing up day in, day out, burning the candle at both ends, taking care of their patients, and really doing the best that they can to equip their patients with better health outcomes. But, you know, let's face it, we got to take good care of ourselves or we're not going to be there, you know, very long. We got to put our own oxygen masks on. And I know it sounds so cliche, but we got to do that. And it's. It's hard for us as practitioners to give that advice to our clients because many of them need to hear this as well if we ourselves are not doing it and taking good care of ourselves. So what are, what are some things that you found in speaking, you speak to so many practitioners. Would you agree that these numbers kind of make sense to you? Like, is that in alignment with what you're seeing and in the conversations that you're having with people?

I've definitely experienced. I think there's a certain type of practitioner who is attracted to what we do here at Perfect Practice and Living Proof Institute, they're realizing inherently this feeling that, I can't keep this up. So I think it's a little skewed towards. I don't hear as much burnout, because I think there's a little bit more awareness about, hey, I need to practice what I preach, I need to sleep enough, I need to eat well, I need to exercise and want to take care of myself. But it's often wanting to also help their patients deal with burnout, because burnout isn't isolated to doctors here in all different fields. And it's really like you said, how do you be. How do they be? Can. How can they be in integrity with what they're telling, you know, their audience and their patients to do? And they want to be. They want to live, you know, their message, so to speak.

Yeah, absolutely.

I'm curious for you Personally, like you mentioned, everyone has a burnout experience. How about your, your personal burnout experience? How did you realize that that was something that you needed to maybe turn around?

Yeah. You know, and here's the thing. The thing with burnout is sometimes we don't feel burnt out until we're, you know, completely turned to ashes. Right. Because the embers in a fire actually burn really hot. So for us, we can feel like we're still, we still have that fire in us, so to speak, but eventually, you know, every. You run out of fuel. So for me, it was actually when I took an adrenal saliva test and my adrenal results came back, like, totally flat. Now, I didn't necessarily feel that way, but I also recognize as a functional medicine practitioner that, you know, you're not always going to feel bad and then your lab's going to show it, sometimes your labs are going to show it first, and those are going to be early warning signs that something needs to be a little bit different. So at the time, I was kind of managing our Toronto location, kind of overseeing operations in Cincinnati. I mean, thank God Dr. Jared was there. And, you know, amazing, you know, caring practitioner who also looked after the practice. And then I had a young family. My son at the time was like three, four years old. So you're trying to manage, like starting a new practice in a new country, so to speak, managing one that's about eight hours away if you drive, and then having a family to be responsible to and of course trying to grow your team and train them and bring them up to speed. So there was a lot of moving parts in my life that eventually you just can't do it anymore. And not that I ever got to that point where I was completely exhausted, couldn't get out of bed, but I saw the writing on the wall. And so I was fortunate enough to get the right testing at the right time that told me, hey, you need to really figure this out and prioritize things. I was mentioning to Deepa just the other day, we had a wonderful dinner with Peter Katz and we were just talking about, you know, how busy he is right now. And, and that reminds me of back in the day where I would basically come home at 8 o' clock at night and then have dinner, and then there's not much gas left in the tank at that point and you would just go to sleep. And I would never advise somebody to do that. And I wouldn't do that, you know, consistently at this point in my life. It's pretty rare that I have a late dinner now because I prioritize certain things. But yeah, so that was my first kind of insight into the fact that my body was heading in that direction. And in terms of early warning signs that we want to look out for is if we don't have the same get up and go in the morning, sometimes that could be our body telling us something, but sometimes it could also be our mind telling us something as well. So we want to pay attention to those cues in the sense that if you don't feel excited about what you do, then that could be a sign that you're heading towards burnout. Right. Something that used to excite you before doesn't excite you anymore. Could mean that the battery's being drained. If you haven't taken a vacation in quite some time, the battery is probably getting drained. If you don't have a self care practice consistently whether it's exercise, getting outside, connecting with friends, as you mentioned, these are all things that, that charge our batteries. And there's more to charging our batteries than getting enough sleep. That's a common, I think misconception that people have and can only sleep so much to charge it charges a certain element of your battery. I think there's like several battery packs that we have, right? There is good food, there's good sleep, there's time in nature, there's time away from thinking and pouring into your work, there's time away from sitting. There's so many different ways that we should be charging our batteries. And you know, one thing I remember dropping, I was depot was dropping Devin off to school one day and I was heading out for a walk in the woods and Devin's like, hey dad, where are you going? And my old answer would have been I'm going for a walk. But my new answer at that time was I'm going to work. And he said, what are you talking about? Like you work from home. And I said, well, working on myself is working on my business. And in fact it's the most important person and tool for me to work on is me because that's going to represent how I show up. The decision making, you know, skills and capabilities, time management, people management, all of that stuff is dependent on how I take care of myself. And Joe Polish calls us entrepreneurs a million dollar racehorse. So if you want the million dollar racehorse to win races, you don't, you got to feed it, right? You got to make sure it goes to bed on time, it exercises it, it's got good trainers and coaches and all those things. And we need to kind of put ourselves in that light of being that million dollar resource for our business.

I love that. And one of the things I've recently came up, like, talking to like, our parents, generation, Sophie, Sophie's parents, you know, my parents, maybe probably your parents. One of the comments was like, your generation is a little bit soft, a little bit. You don't know what hard work is. And while I appreciate really hard work, I like to do things around the house. And it almost feels like there's a little guilt around burnout. Like, oh, if I'm not burnt out, there's a little bit of pride in burnout. Like, I'm working so hard, doing so many things, juggling all these balls in the air. And so I struggle a little bit because it's like, oh, am I being lazy or is it in? But I've really kind of changed the way I talk to myself. It's like if I invest time in these activities that fill up my battery like an athlete. Olympians spend a lot of time in recovery mode by just training. I learned that, you know, studying like Olympians, Michael Phelps, you know, Steph Curry, NBA players, LeBron James, they invest hundreds of thousands, not millions of dollars into their bodies so they can perform. So I don't know how you feel about sometimes the work ethic. Where's that tension between work ethic and self care? Because I don't think you can be at both ends of the spectrum. You can't be totally on the self care end of the spectrum or else you won't get anything done. Have you thought about that? How do you talk to yourself when it comes to work hard but also recover hard?

Yeah. Jeff Bezos has a great line around this. He says that a good CEO only needs to make three really good decisions a day. But if you're tired, burnt out, spent or scattered, then you're not going to be able to make those really good decisions. And so that's how I look at it. You know, I look at every decision I make as being an important one, and the ripple effect and the impact of it is going to spread far and wide. And so I need to be in a state where I can make the best decision possible to serve my team, my mission, my purpose. In terms of like the older generation and this current generation, I would say that they had better boundaries and they had more natural boundaries than we do. Like, you go to work, right? You wake up and then you go to work. You punch in, you punch out, and you leave it at work. So you Know, it's, I kind of envy my younger self who used to work in a coupon factory where I would basically go there, drive around a forklift, move boxes of coupons around and then I would go home and, and there was no, like, there was no carryover from that job to what I do at home. Like, I'm not at home trying to solve this coupon, you know, placement challenge. So I think that there's also that to take into consideration that are like, when you're doing intellectual work versus physical work, it's hard to turn it off. Right. Because we take those challenges home with us and they're, you know, scenarios and problem solving, you know, opportunities are just playing over and over in our head and then it's easy for us to jump on our tech and our computer and to plug right in. So I think there's that component that our parents need to take into consideration. And there's also so many things that are competing for our attention this day and age that they didn't have like, they didn't have the Internet to constantly be kind of tugging at them. They didn't have cell phones and notifications dinging and stuff like that tugging at them so their boss couldn't email them and say, hey, I need you to do this for me after hours or work on this over the weekend. And if they did, they got paid overtime. Right. There was. Those boundaries were very clear again depending on the type of work that they were doing. But whereas nowadays those boundaries, especially when you're working from home, get really, really blurry. So it can feel like you're, you know, you're just constantly working or just immersed in your work because physically there is no barrier between you and doing.

That work that's so important. It reminds me of the business writer Peter Drucker. He wrote the book the Effective Executive and he describes the, the difference between knowledge work and I guess essentially phys, everything else physical work. And when I was reading that book, I'm like, oh, a lot of the work we do as practitioners is knowledge work. And you know, our brain is one of the most metabolically active, you know, organs in our body. It uses up the most glucose on a day to day basis. And so I think also burnout can happen a lot for knowledge workers up in, in our, in our head, in our spirit. And it's a, we have to acknowledge the importance of boundaries in our head, in our mind.

Yeah. And not, not an easy thing to do. Right. It's like hard to, you know, take people that you really care about like your clients and patients and then just like turn that switch off and say, you know, I can't care about you right now. I got to care about myself. So it is important that we do find ways to shut it off. And one of the ways to shut it off is to actually do something active. So actively engage in your own self care and healing. And you know, that could be getting together with friends, it could be going to watch a movie, it could be, you know, reading a book, it could be going for a walk in the woods, right where you leave your devices at home. And yeah, you can do all the thinking you want, but you're not going to do any work today. I also encourage people to set aside what we call super happy fun days, where one day out of the month or whatever cadence you, you want, that works for you. But one day out of the month, you are completely off the grid. And so you let your staff know that, hey, I'm going to be off the grid this day. Anything that you need leading up to this day, let me know in advance. And if you do, email me. You set the autoresponder and people know that, hey, you're not available today. And you take that day for yourself. You perhaps disconnect your phone and put it in airplane mode for the day and you get a massage, you go for a walk, you go watch a movie, go to the car dealership, do something fun, something that excites you, something makes you feel young again. Go to your favorite restaurant and really spoil yourself. Because essentially, why else would you have a business if you can't once in a while spoil yourself, right? The idea isn't to be spoiled, you know, in the sense that you're kind of rotting in your business. It's to be able to do the things that you enjoy and love. And so set aside that time each month if you're not already doing that, to really pour back into yourself. And it's just one day, right? You might do it every other week, you might do it, you know, once a month, but do the happy, super happy fun day and watch what happens. You'll feel young again, you'll feel rejuvenated, you'll feel enthusiastic about your business. And you'll also realize that nobody died right in the process of you taking a day off. But you feel alive again.

That was one of the things I remember after graduating from school is the biggest worry is like anyone you work with is going to die or something. And you realize like humans, if you don't work in an acute emergency kind of care situation, people are quite resilient, even with very chronic serious illnesses. And you can kind of rest assured that they're moving in the right direction. Speaking of right direction, how do you think as healthcare practitioners, what does the ideal practice, the business model, look like to solve and prevent burnout and increase satisfaction? Just helping people?

Yeah. What I found that works really well is a hybrid model. A hybrid model is a little bit different than your typical one on one functional medicine model where it's all on you to solve all the problems of all the clients that you have. What we propose and what we do in our practice that is really, really time effective and efficient is a hybrid group practice model where there is some one on one care. So people are still heard, they're still seen, they're still taken through on their own unique journey and their nuances and individuality is addressed. But then 80% of the process is done via a group setting. And in that group setting, other people with similar challenges as them are being taught the same lessons. They're asking similar questions to what questions they might have or maybe even questions that they didn't think of are being asked and answered. And it allows them to support one another. So there's three keys to, you know, really a successful business and journey for people. One is a roadmap. So we provide our clients with a roadmap. Here's what we're going to be doing over the next period of time. They need a guide. So that guide in this case might be myself or Deepa or Alice. And they need a community. And so you need, kind of need all three of those things. We're finding, the research is also showing this, that you need all three of those things. And all of those things help reduce burnout. So if your clients have a roadmap, then they are not confused. They're not constantly dinging you and pinging you and asking you questions because they know exactly what's coming up next. Secondly, if you've got a guide, then that guide is somebody who is going to reassure that that team or that group is going to be taken care of. So there's some safety there. And then the community, the community can support one another and take a lot of the load off of the practitioner or the guide. And because other people can point them in the right direction or support them with a certain challenge they might be facing. So you need all three of those things. And I believe the practice of the future will have all three of those things. If your practice doesn't have those things already because it allows for you to do your one on one work, it allows for you to do teaching and training and it allows for others in the community to support one another and, and that takes so much of the load off the practitioner and I believe also creates better outcomes for people.

Awesome. So I think maybe this is a, maybe we should share people with people where we can help them if they want to build something like this, where they can learn more and how to get those three, three pillars in place.

Yeah. So one of the things that we're doing that's coming up here pretty soon is we're hosting our event called Perfect Practice Live. And, and Perfect Practice Live is we're where we're actually going to be sharing the 12 steps and pillars and processes that are required to set up a practice that allows you to have, you know, A, attract the right people that really love what you do, B, create transformation for them and C, do it without sacrificing yourself. Right. You're not a martyr in your business. You're there to be a guide who needs to survive the entire journey. Right. We don't want the guide, you know, being in trouble. We need the guy to be healthy and, you know, cognizant and be present to the challenges that people are facing so that they're there to help solve them. So this will allow this event. We're actually sharing this for the first time ever, where we're going to share that 12 step process and walk people through why they need these 12 steps. And then of course, what are those 12 steps that they need and share with them a complete blueprint and framework to set up their practice. That is Covid proof, that is recession proof, that is burnout proof, that is setting them up to scale to help as many people as they can is also founder proof because, and I just want to elaborate on that a little bit, a lot of practices set themselves up in such a way where the founder or the lead practitioner acquires so much specialty knowledge and that they become irreplaceable. And what ends up happening is as the practice grows, which, you know, eventually if you're doing good work, your practice is going to grow, then all of the pressure to service the client is on the practitioner. And the problem with that is that they can't take a day off, they can't take a week off, they can't take a month off because they are the holders of all that special knowledge. Whereas instead of having specialty knowledge, if you had systems and anyone can follow the system Then that actually gives the opportunity to kind of liberate yourself from the day to day operations, should you choose to. So what's really cool is like, you know, Alice, who started off as one of our office managers and you know, kind of office assistants, went to coaching school and now is using our systems and getting amazing results with our clients because she's following a process. She didn't have to invent the process. She didn't have to acquire all the specialty knowledge and training that I had and Deepa had. But we put together a system that she could follow. And of course she's done a lot of learning on her own and she's passionate about it. So I don't want to discredit that. But it's the system that actually creates the majority of the outcome for people. And so I encourage practitioners to tune in because we're going to be sharing what that process looks like and how they can encapsulate and bottle their knowledge up in such a way that creates a system that liberates them from the day to day operation. And now if you love the day to day, that's totally fine. However, when you have like a long waiting list like some practitioners do, what that tells me is you don't have a system that you've taught somebody else who can come in and produce similar results as you can. And you're going to be, you know, these people are going to be on this waiting list, I call it the suffering list. Suffering until there's enough room in your practice for you to see them. However, if you were to able to create a system, then those people could be seen almost immediately by somebody who simply follows the process.

I like to sell practitioners who are looking into working with us. It's like we all have the knowledge to essentially build a Porsche, but it takes a lot of energy, investment, time, mistakes to build the Porsche. Why don't we just drive the Porsche or the Tesla, whichever vehicle of choice is yours. And I know probably you've learned and I've learned the best way to learn is to be around people who are doing it. Because we use our mirror neurons, we learn so much faster, we believe so much more that we can do it. And I know there's a, maybe a lot of docs or practitioners out there watching, like, how can I do this? They might have hesitations. One of the best ways to learn is just surround yourself with a community who's who, who's doing it. And that's what I know you and our team want to create. That community to support everyone to actually achieve it and do it and become it.

Yeah, absolutely. And I forgot to mention this, but the link for the event is absolutely free. Is perfect practice live.com so check it out, join us, we'd love to see you there. We'd love to support you in your own liberation from burnout and stress and anxiety. That often comes with a, you know, kind of a busy one on one practice. And if I could do it all over again, then I would have started having a hybrid model. And here's the thing about a hybrid model is you can still do one on one. So you can take a certain percentage of your clients and do full one on one care like you're doing. You can also do a hybrid of one on one and group. And you can also set up your systems like we have so that it can be a complete do it yourself program. See, if the client can follow the systems that you've created and get equally amazing results. Then you know you have a really scalable solution for your business which can have a wide sweeping impact. So no matter where you are in that spectrum of you want to be completely hands off or you want to be completely hands in, the hybrid model allows you to have that flexibility. And also the hybrid model allows you to have different price points for your clients, right? So you can, you can have something where it's really hands on and one on one, or you could have something and that could be your premium price point. You could have something in the middle which is your hybrid price point. And then you could have something that is kind of a DIY system and group system where there is no one on one and that could be your entry point for your clients. So it gives you flexibility at price points. So everyone is saying yes, nobody's saying no. And it also gives you the ability to, if you love that one on one that you're still able to provide that for people.