Medical healthcare is considered to increase peoples life quality and expectancy while also being effective in the overall well-being of societies. The health care workers are the frontier of this initiative who undertake the responsibility to keep the community’s physical and mental health concerns at healthier levels. With such essential duties, healthcare workers may need to deal with overloaded and extended shifts, which makes the life of a healthcare professional unusual compared to other careers. With all the complex and emotional work, it will be difficult for healthcare workers to achieve proper work-life balance while protecting themselves from job burnout and anxiety. Here is an article helpful to see the aspects of work-life balance in hospitals.
You’ll learn about:
- What is the work-life balance?
- Consequences of a poor work-life balance for healthcare workers
- Benefits of a good work-life balance for healthcare workers
- Real-life examples
What is the work-life balance?
Work-life balance is the harmony between an individual’s social and professional life. The balance is vital for healthcare workers to progress at a stable level in their professional careers while at the same time maintaining their physical, mental, and social well-being. With a good work-life balance, you will be able to manage all the responsibilities of your medical profession while still having adequate time for your hobbies and social activities.
What is more than social life behaviors is that an ideal balance will provide great emotional support to let you sleep properly and eat healthily. The purpose of maintaining a work-life balance among healthcare workers is to reduce excessive stress and anxiety, which are common issues for healthcare workers, and consequently prevent job burnout.
Consequences of a poor work-life balance for healthcare workers
An ideal work-life balance is a state where healthcare workers equally have enough time and effort in their professional and personal lives. However, there may be numerous factors that lead healthcare workers to have a poor work-life balance, such as:
- Emotional exhaustion,
- longer shifts,
- the increased workload at work,
- increased responsibilities at home,
- having children,
- and workplace stress.
When you focus only on your profession and overwhelm yourself with long-hour duties and pressure, you would deprive yourself of your friends, family, and the magnificence of collective life. Having a poor work-life balance would lead to distractibility, and distracted healthcare professionals may make medical mistakes that will affect the patient’s condition adversely and even cause job burnout.
Emotional exhaustion from their jobs may result in healthcare workers being less productive and increase welfare risks during medical operations. Below are comprehensive explanations of the consequences of a poor work-life balance among healthcare workers.
A job burnout
Many healthcare workers who cannot maintain a healthy work-life balance face job burnout and intense mental health issues even before reaching the mid of their careers. A survey conducted among healthcare workers through EDUMED during Covid-19 said that 26.6% of the participants struggled with emotional exhaustion and 53% with severe burnout. Emotional exhaustion will not only make your career advancement difficult but may also bring you mental health problems and anxiety.
Conflicts in social relationships
Staying in the hospital for long and irregular hours and the healthcare system’s increased workload may weaken healthcare workers’ social relationships and sources of emotional support. Most of them can’t get a day off on weekends or even public holidays. Without proper livelihood and emotional support from having activities with families and friends, healthcare workers are prone to get high anxiety levels. Nevertheless, having strong social connections benefits your mental health and can help your career progression.
Physical disadvantages
A poor work-life balance will probably end with insomnia and, as a result, a constant feeling of fatigue and irregular eating habits. Consequently, your body may lose its immunity and become susceptible to even slight physical ailments that may harm your efficiency as a healthcare worker. Continuing headaches, respiratory conditions, and intestinal problems are a few complaints you may contend with.
Benefits of a good work-life balance for healthcare workers
Having a well-balanced work-life doesn’t mean giving up trying our maximum potential as healthcare workers. With a better way of living, you can be more productive in day-to-day tasks. While it can have positive results in career progress, spending a fair amount of time on desires and jobs is going to have different positive outcomes for healthcare workers, such as:
Better patient care
Have you ever thought that healthcare professionals with a poor work-life balance can also affect their patient’s conditions? EDUMED reported that in a survey conducted among healthcare workers in the past years, 76 of 226 stated that the weak patient care in hospitals is because of stressed healthcare workers. Another study conducted at similar times said that the feeling of job burnout and emotional exhaustion caused by the increased workload in hospitals increased the potential inaccuracy levels during treatments. This will, unfortunately, endanger the overall well-being of patients. Conversely, timely mental healthcare with a healthy balance can keep professionals’ mental health at better levels and also may have positive results both outside and at work.
Household and relationship well-being
It is inevitable that your life at home to be undesirably affected if you frequently return home exhausted because of patchy and tiring working hours. With a survey that made a cross-sectoral analysis, it was found by EDUMED that healthcare workers took the 6th place in the record of the highest divorce rates, with a heartbreaking rate of 31.6%. As said before, the main reasons for this fact are returning home tired out, paying extra hours in the hospital, mental health issues, and the anxiety caused by increased work duties.
Spending good quality time with your family or partner has positive mental health outcomes either for single and married individuals, such as high emotional support and reduced anxiety. For doctors who have kids, it is especially important to be at home for some hours for the physiological development of children.
In addition, healthcare professionals who maintain deep friendships will also perform more efficiently and comfortably in the hospital, as they will be left from severe work stress and job burnout. Participating in activities that may be helpful to clear your mind and prevent anxiety risks, besides giving you new viewpoints with your friends, is indeed going to provide you with a better-quality work-life balance.
Real-Life examples
You’re the only healthcare worker struggling with a poor work-life balance. The World Health Organization stated that many doctors in the healthcare system are dealing with a poor work-life balance. Some managed to find a way to improve. Below you will find helpful tips given by healthcare professionals to create a proper balance between your hospital and social life.
Spend some time with your friends and family
A general practitioner working at a leading hospital in South East Asia mentioned he had faced the first challenge of an increased workload during his medical school years. The doctor explained that he used to have a poor work-life balance during his residency because he needed to work nearly 24 hours a day, including long night shifts, to catch deadlines for reports and assignments on time. However, medicine was the field he wanted to work in, so he endured. Within those long shifts, every time he had spare time he’d spend it with family and friends. Such emotional support from these significant others motivated him to strive and maintain positive mental health.
Doing activities with your close friends may move you away from the negative feelings and emotional exhaustion from the workspace. A general practitioner working in provincial clinic Malaysia, added that some behaviors of toxic people in the working environment negatively affected their personal life. There may be several toxic people in the workplace, such as manipulators, bullies, gossip, or back stabbers. Dealing with those kinds of people will be uncomfortable and harmful to our mental health. To avoid becoming a stressed healthcare worker, the doctor preferred to spend time with her pals.
Embracing medicine as part of your mission and lifestyle
A general practitioner who currently works in a leading Hospital in central KL indicates that her job did not cause mental health issues as much as harm her social life or even cause anxiety. She claims that the life of a healthcare professional would be much more accessible by accepting to have more intense and sensitive job duties as a doctor.
For her, doctors must keep their mental health at strong levels to become aware that medicine is a part of their lives and aim to get contentment from their medical responsibilities. The way she did this was to gain time management skills and plan her days through her hospital shifts. She said she enjoys her social activities fully, which enables her to look forward to doing the shifts.
Organise both your work and leisure activities
One of the healthcare professionals who used to have a hard time balancing leisure and professional life is an otorhinolaryngologist working in private practice. He asserted that he also dealt with mental health problems because he sometimes could not pay as much attention to his household life as he usually would. The way he solved this problem is through better discipline and practicing focus work, so he could have proper time management and spend spare time with family without worrying about emergency calls. The otorhinolaryngologist concluded that working with optimum care and efficiency during working hours lets him maintain a respected work-life balance during his career.
Additionally, an emergency doctor working in the public healthcare sector in Malaysia, supported this idea by stating that she also used to work late nights before she decided to make working time regulations. She also added that shifts during weekends made spending time with her family challenging and led to anxiety.
Get help from social workers
Social workers are skilled professionals who help people learn how to live better lives. They are specialists in healthy living habits. Healthcare professionals who cannot create a solid work-life balance by themselves can seek help from social workers. They can teach you a healthy way to avoid mental health problems that you may face due to intense working hours and job burnout while providing emotional support. Accordingly, a social worker will be beneficial in creating an ideal work-life balance.
Conclusion
With a solid work-life balance, you will become more productive in making developments that will move you forward in your profession. Significantly, your career progress will not interfere with your social life thanks to a proper plan.
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