Cognitive restructuring could work
Cognitive restructuring is a therapeutic process of learning new ways of interpreting and responding to people and situations. It helps you change the “filter” through which you interact with your environment. Dr. Gibson said it’s a tool to use with care after other modes of therapy that help you understand your patterns and how they developed because of how you view and understand the world.
“The message of [cognitive-behavioral therapy] or cognitive restructuring is there’s something wrong with the way you’re thinking, and we need to change it or fix it, but in a traumatic system [like health care], you’re thinking has been an adaptive process related to the harm in the environment you’re in,” said Dr. Gibson.
“So, if you [jump straight to cognitive restructuring before other types of therapy], then we just gaslight ourselves into believing that there’s something wrong with us, that we haven’t adapted sufficiently to an environment that’s actually harmful.”
Strive for a few systemic changes
Systemic changes can be small ones within your own sphere. For example, Dr. Magan said, work toward making little tweaks to the flow of your day that will increase calm and reduce frustration.
“Make a ‘bug list,’ little, regular demands that drain your energy, and discuss them with your colleagues and supervisors to see if they can be improved,” he said. Examples include everyday frustrations like having unsolicited visitors popping into your office, scheduling complex patients too late in the day, or having a computer freeze whenever you access patient charts.
Though not always financially feasible, affecting real change and finding relief from all these insidious bugs can improve your mental health and burnout symptoms.
“Physicians tend to work extremely hard in order to keep holding together a system that is often not inherently sustainable, like the fascia of a body under tremendous strain,” said Dr. Magan. “Sometimes the brave thing to do is to refuse to continue being the lynchpin and let things break, so the system will have to start improving itself, rather than demanding more and more of the people in it.”
A version of this article first appeared on Medscape.com.