StayCurrent Forum: Resident Wellness

How's it going, Trav? Good, man. How are you doing? Good. You you just got done with uh a string of nights, is that right? Yeah, yeah. I just finished up uh and then I got six days off. So this is my my sixth of six days off to celebrate seven straight nights. Do you like nights? Do you even Do you do you prefer that or do you like days? I I love the uh the flow of nights. You know, you come in, it's busy, and then things kind of trickle in and you kind of clean up the department. Um but for sure days is just an easier thing to to kind of come in and be awake when your circadian clock is telling you to be awake. Let's jump into the episode then. Uh Hey there listeners, it's Rod Gerardo from Cincinnati Children's. and I'm here with one of my longtime friends, actually my former roommate in medical school, Trevor Schrobat. Trevor, how are you doing? Dude, roommate, very nice uh introduction. I I used to call me his doom-mate because it was just so much destruction and doom in our in our house together. No, I I'm doing great. Happy to to be on. Thanks for having me as a guest. Yeah. The uh our our apartment was wild. I feel like we were the the place where everyone would come and hang out. Um And which I think you need in med school. You need like a group that you can just chill and hang out with and um I think in residency, sometimes like because of time and everything, like or getting into practice like you're doing now, like I think the time kind of gets away from you and you kind of lose that. Um I know that uh this is my long-winded transition to get to the question that I had for you is that you know, resident wellness has been so such a hot topic in the past few years. And I know that you were the resident chair, like wellness chair for your uh emergency medicine program. I mean, let me know, tell the listeners why why is wellness for the residents so important? Yeah, for sure. I think it's a great question and and something that now ACGME and a lot of the residency programs are are, you know, have to address is resident wellness. I mean, we have a super tough job. I mean, and I I don't want to hear about the back in my day, we were working 120 hours a week. I mean, even the 80-hour week cap is super tough. We see stressful things. We see people, you know, dying on us on a semi-regular basis. You're doing complex things, you're learning a ton of new things at once, uh that can burn you out. And so the most important thing is to try to find ways to stay well. Uh it'll it'll make you uh be well as as the name implies. It'll it'll also make you um feel like you've accomplished something, you know. You could you could go home, you feel a little bit more refreshed as opposed to feeling burn out where you come home and you have nothing left in the tank. You just want to lay there and watch, I don't know, desperate housewives or Dr. Oz or whatever's on at the time. Are you watching Desperate Housewives? I I you know, that keeps me well. No. What what whatever the youth are watching these days, you know? I know whatever kids are watching whatever the med students are watching these days. Uh no, it's it's true. It's like you get home from a shift after working, you know, your 80-hour cap and you know, sometimes all you want to do is lay down and sleep for the day until the next day you have to come into work. I mean, what kind of uh I don't know, strategies or tactics did you implement and did you recommend for your program as, you know, the wellness chair. Am I getting your title right? What was your title? So I I had a few, yeah, wellness chair. I think technically one of them. I was also the mustache chair uh because part as part of my uh my wellness program uh charity and donation was one of them. We did a a mustache calendar and raised a bunch of money for doctors without borders. But uh but no, I think that's a great question. Even that the idea of wellness, it means different things to different people. Um one of my favorite things is the feedback that we would get for our wellness sessions because some people absolutely, you know, they they felt well. You know, they didn't really want to do anything else. They felt like it was not for them. So you know, because you're kind of get into this whole like, you know, peace, love, yoga, you know, meditation. And and that's great for some people. It really helps some people keep very well. Some people just don't want to hear about it. They just I mean, imagine, you know, like your your seasoned orthopedic surgeon uh sitting there and trying to meditate and find inner wellness. It's just not different strokes for different folks. And so that was our biggest approach is trying to find out how to help everybody. And so things that we focused on were how to, you know, appropriately nourish yourself when you're on shift. How to make sure you're taking, you know, water breaks and bathroom breaks. And it sounds so small. It sounds like we're back in kindergarten, right? But these are things that interns don't do well. These are things that residents do terribly. They they neglect their body for 8 to 12 to 16 hours. They get home, they they feel like crap. Um and then it it ruins the little bit of time they have out of the hospital. So we focused on nutrition and sleep and kind of mindfulness and some other things um to kind of help everybody along. No, that's true. Like not not everybody likes to relax using the same methods. So you kind of have to change it up. You kind of have to do that. And and sometimes I think forcing residents to do, you know, let's say yoga, for example. I mean, yeah, a lot of people are going to roll their eyes. And then there're going to be some who go to yoga every week and this is their jam. But I also think there are that most people like will go and they'll just have fun with, you know, their other co-residents and bond over like the, oh, you know, haha, we have to be forced to do yoga, haha. And then I think there's some that probably will find a new habit. I mean, that would be nice if someone finds a new habit and they're like, oh, that meditating actually kind of helped. I think I'm going to try that. Next time I'm on shift and I'm on break, I'm going to give myself like 30 seconds to just kind of like chill and, you know, meditate or or some sort of tactic like that. Um so what kind of uh what kind of stuff have you carried on through now as your your junior attending hood. Trevor's been uh uh done with residency for now what like 10 months or something. Yeah, like So what what what kind of strategies or tactics now have you found you carried on with you from residency and transitioning now to being a new attending? Yeah, that's a great question. I think first off, what works for me may not work for other people. And again, just like the feedback that we would get from these resident wellness uh lecturers, you know, everybody operates a little bit differently. But for me, I I don't know. I I do a few things that I've taken there. And I think one thing that I do on my days off is I don't really have huge expectations of, you know, doing every little thing possible to to clean the house, to to spend basically my whole day off just being productive so that it goes right back into work. I think a small thing that I do personally is I just try to do an hour and a half of something productive. 30 minutes to fitness, 30 minutes to something around the house, and then 30 minutes to something intellectual. So like, um mostly reading journal articles or something like that. And at 90 minutes on my day off, then I can relax, I can play games, I can watch Desperate Housewives, you know, I could I could go to Google and and start looking up the best mustaches getting ready for the next calendar. I I could do these things guilt-free. Um And one of the other things that I do too, you know, nutrition is is uh your passion, you know, you're a former nutrition guy. Um I guess current nutrition guy too. I guess that tradition never graduates. Uh but but one of the things is, you know, I meal prep now. That's just something I do to make sure that when I'm on shift, I'm staying well too. that I I come in with my huge tumbler of ice water flavored with Mio, my meal prepped thing, you know, I'm I'm hydrated, I'm nourished and I leave the shift with a lot more energy than I did in residency. You've been using those little Mio packets also for as long as I can remember. I feel like we went on a trip like first year of med school and you're like, yeah, dude, they don't have like flavored water so I bring these. I was like, okay man, go for it. It's like actually delicious. So, but you're right. I mean, I feel like you do those little things for yourself as the physician. and then ultimately, I the goal is that you are in a better place mentally, physically, etc. so that you are on your A game when you when the patient needs you. When you need to be on high alert for a really sick patient who comes in the door or a really complex patient who maybe is kind of a head scratcher. You need all of your engines firing so that the patient can benefit. So I love these tips. I will I I I feel like I need to probably take some of those tips honestly uh for myself as a general surgery resident, but um no, that's great. Is there anything else you want to tell the viewer or uh any other little piece? Pearls of wisdom? I I think I think the biggest thing is to have some good introspection. Whenever you're you're dealing with residency or something hard. What what what's burning you out? Is it on shift? Is it something at home? Is it something you control? Um and and making note of this. I think one of the things early in residency documentation killed me. I hated having a shift that was supposed to last 8 to 10 hours and getting out two hours late because I put all my notes off until the end. And then that eats into my time at home with my wife and my dog. And so again, that's one thing that and and take note as residents that, you know, things that you hate when you're looking for a job, apply to a bunch of different places, see what they have to offer. So for me, I have Dragon, I could dictate my stuff, right? I can get a scribe if I want to, which I plan on doing here here shortly too to help minimize my documentation need so that I can just take care of patients and get out on time. That's really the things I love to do, right? Um you know, if you're like you know, when you're looking at jobs, negotiations are key. If you want a little bit more time off, I I know one of my friends gets one, you know, four weeks of vacation or whatever. Same job, same person who applied a year later got five weeks, the same salary just because they negotiated for it. So if time off or certain things are important to you, just know that as you go forward to ask for them. Now in residency, it's tough. You're kind of stuck. Um but still, I think that if you see things that could be changed feasibly, something that burns you out or burns out your classmates, talking to your higher ups or program director, um is great. If they can't change it, then maybe again, get together with the colleagues and have a beer over it and talk about it. Um that's yeah, that's what's gotten me through most of residency and and my first year as an attending. No, that's awesome. That's awesome advice and I hope that everyone takes it. I think that, you know, we'll have more conversations like this with Trevor. Maybe not necessarily all about yoga and, you know, Mio water, but we'll get into some other uh the other layers of Dr. Schrobat and emergency medicine. So, uh until next episode, thanks so much for coming, Trevor. I appreciate it and we'll we'll talk again. Yeah, thanks for thanks for having me. I look forward to next time.