Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Practice Tip: Does your home life suffer from practice stress "strike-through"?

"Strike-through"? Remember that wonderful OR term from your 4th year surgical rotation? It’s (to refresh your memory) that process of fluids moving from a non-sterile area through a barrier and contaminating a sterile surgical area. Not good right? Well, a similar occurrence of “contamination” occurs when practice stress moves over into your family and home life. This is called practice stress “strike-through”. In this case day to day problems and stresses in a practice piggy back home with you and infect your family life. An example is the problem-child staff member (receptionist, Tech, DVM etc…) or client that drives everybody nutty BUT nobody confronts or handles. The result? We go home and complain to our spouses, friends and family and basically dump the problem on them. And the result? Unneeded stress in your family and home life. Not good!

Here’s what to do about it:
1. Handle what you see. It’s what professionals do.
2. People are never as scary as they seem. So confront them.
3. With anyone that is stressing you out sit them down in a private room and communicate. You’ll find that the more you do this the less you’ll take home.

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