Empowering Women in Chiropractic - Resilience for Doctors and How to Avoid Burnout

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Hello everyone, and this is Dr. Nathalie Beauchamp for Empowering Women in Chiropractic, brought to you by ChiroSecure. And today I wanna talk about something that we, I don't necessarily talk about often at all, is our own resilience and avoiding burnout and being in practice. I've been in practice for 27 years and I always say that, I've re reinvented the clinic.

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Many times in term of branding and even our team and so forth. But we have to be careful to avoid burnout. And this is something, as I was preparing for this presentation, I'm gonna be taking my own advice with this. So let's get to the first slide here. And because I wanna focus on what we can do to biohack our.

Our mindset and making sure that we're leveraging our time because we're busy with things that we can do to our health. And you guys are all doctors listening to this. So I'm not bringing anything new, but I think just bringing things in perspective and kind of a little check, of what we do in our lives right now.

So the reality of burnout, 50% of healthcare professional experience burnout, and that's at large, definitely not just in chiropractic high patient volume, emotional fatigue, and also the pressure as well. 'cause let's face it, it's patient situation and health status that we have to deal with.

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But then there's the business aspect as well. So resilience is. Truly what we need to develop in our lives so we can be able to respond to stress. And I know that you guys talk about that daily with your own patient, and I'm hoping that you do what you preach. But again, the point of me bringing this up is just to bring to your awareness.

I have, I was, I. Neglecting myself in the last few months, and am I taking good care of myself? So the three pillars for doctor resilience, obviously the mindset our belief about stress and also success. And I think this point is really crucial, especially for people that have been in practice for a longer time.

I think there are. Seasons in a practice and maybe when we're 15, 20 years in practice, we might be busy. Go. And as we taper off practice, we wanna slow down a little bit. So those are all things that I think we need to think about and say, okay, am I happy with the pace I, or do I get home that I'm.

So tired that I'm exhausted and I can't function. 'Cause we all enjoy what we do, but we wanna make sure that we're not just focusing everything on the practice and not having energy for the rest. Sleep a huge one. I know myself in the past three or four years with the change in life and so forth, sleep, I was getting up early to go to CrossFit in the morning and not really paying attention.

And then. Family issues with my mom and health issues and so forth. And then I realized, oh my goodness, I'm exhausted. And also getting a a ring and I know some people will use apple Watch or what have you. It really made me realize. Oh, I am not sleeping enough. So having a tracker to really track your sleep, your movement, your heart rate variability to see if you're rested to push for the next day, that has been a game changer.

And I know something just popped up on my phone the other day that I have been using it for five years. So this is something that I really. Pay attention of my routine the night before. Did I eat late? What did I eat? What supplements seem to be, doing well for my sleep and then movement.

Luckily as chiropractor, we move a lot, so I'm always thankful that our what we do daily is not sedentary. So for us movement, I think we can always do more, but it's something that we're lucky that we are moving. And then the nervous system regulation. All of us have to be checked and adjusted on our regular basis.

And then we should know all the trick, with the vagus nerve exercise and so forth and breath work to be able to, make sure that we downregulate our synthetic nervous system and then biohacking. To me biohacking and I actually have written a book on this co-author with Dr. Paul Sly.

It's called smart Cuts. And it's all about biohacking our health span, and it's all tools that I'm using daily and I'm sure you have yours that are the most efficient tools. Again, if you love running for an hour and a half, go for it, but. Point is it's not necessary the best use of your time and biohacking to me is little shortcuts to have the best result.

And also biohacking is leveraging many of those things together. For instance, I love going for walks with my my, my weighted vest now. So I feel like, okay, I'm outside. I'm moving. I'm getting sun in, in my eyes. And on my skin in the summer, not right now. And I'm also stressing my musculoskeletal system because I'm carrying this 40 pound weighted vest on.

So to me, it's hitting a lot of things. So that's what biohacking is. And same thing with our supplements and energy. Hacks that we can do to make sure that we stay peak during our adjustment hours and to have the best of energy. So stress is not the enemy. I think we all know about eustress and de-stress.

And, but we have to focus on adaptability. And this is, again, something that we're so good as, so I hope you're having this conversation with your patient, but from a business point of view. What can you let go? Ha what can you let go of? Because I know my to-do list can get, miles long.

But I always sit back and say, okay, what can I delegate to someone on my team? Can I use AI to streamline if, it's something that I'm not strong at, in term of gathering information or so forth, and then focusing on that good 80 20 rule that. Things that we do have to generate and move the needle the most.

For instance, right now I'm re in the process of rerecording my doctor's report because they're a few years old. Guess what? I moved that at the top of my list because this is something that will have a big impact in the practice because it is educating my patient and then eliminating low value and energy draining at.

Activities we're all guilty of, defaulting to our phones and and endless scrolling. So it's really, being cognition of where we're spending our time. So recovery, I talked about sleep. Getting outside. I know it's not always great, and if it's not sunny, I'll turn on my video lights on while I'm working.

And using my red light therapy behind me. Magnesium, we all know is great. Leveraging light, blue light blocker and orange light or red light at night for reading. And then movement, as I mentioned, we're are moving a lot, but not neglecting strength training, especially as we age. And again, this is something that we are talking about to our patient.

We just have to remember to do it. Nervous system reset. I don't have to talk to you guys about the vagus nerve and its power with the cold, exposure with the box breathing, the physiological side and so forth, and sauna as well. So those are all things that we have to integrate into our own life. To, to a certain extent, to be able to really manage our nervous system.

Fueling for mental and physical stamina. Again, conversation we have with patient. I know for me it's a bit of a struggle to get enough protein in. So this is actually how I guide my day to say, okay, why, what did I eat protein wise? Today and re really making sure that I fine tune this. Obviously with healthy fat.

And as I mentioned too, whereabout wear wearable to really track your heart rate variability, your movement, and your sleep. I love red light therapy's a picture of me doing my red light therapy. I have also a pimp that I really like to lay down on with the different protocol and also using magnesium adaptogen like rhodiola, ashwagandha.

Neutropic, those are all things like, as doctor we have the knowledge, it's just a matter of, figuring out if that's something you wanna integrate. It's figuring out the companies as well that are out there. Biggest mistake to avoid ignoring the sign of burnout and guilty of it. I was pushing through and not realizing that my energy was less.

And not prioritizing recovery. We can go. But we do need time to recharge. Even with exercise. There are time that we need to let our body slow down and restore thinking more our equal more success. Shifting to working smarter and not harder. I think we always have to remind ourselves of that, especially what is our definition of success?

And this is something that, I have close friends that we always talk about that what is a definition of a successful practice and what it was 10 years ago, 20 years ago might be different. So just again, bringing this. Top of mind of having those discussion. So action step that you can take.

Recovery tool. As I said, there's so much out there and they're fun. They could be a little bit pricey sometime, but they're fun tools that you can integrate setting boundaries. Of your workload and saying yes to things that don't recharge you and saying yes to things that you don't necessarily enjoy doing.

There's so much we of us to go around and as doctors we are giving, giving and problem solving all day long. So we really have to protect the time for us to recharge and remembering that it is a long time, long term game. That we're talking about, and it needs to be sustainable as well. So resilience isn't about working harder, it is about working smarter and focusing on our recovery.

And as I said at the start, this is something that when I was preparing the slide, I'm like reminder to myself as well to focus on those things. Setting the boundaries, making sure that I'm not wasting time on things that are. Not going to be productive for the practice and leaving some time for me to recover as well.

So hopefully this was a good reminder for you to take care of yourself and to integrate fun and exciting tools that are out there that can make your health, your biohacking, your health. To have more fun in it as well. I'm always myself trying new products and new tools to keep it fresh and trying different things.

So hopefully you enjoyed this segment of Empowering Women in Chiropractic, brought to you by ChiroSecure. My name is Dr. Nathalie Beauchampn.

Join us each week as we bring you the best in business growth, practice management, social media, marketing, networking, leadership, and lots more. If it's about women in practice and business, you'll hear it here.

This has been a ChiroSecure production.

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