You’re a busy physician, so you might not always have time to take care of yourself as well as your patients.
But taking care of yourself doesn’t just mean focusing on your physical well-being. Your mental, financial, and emotional fitness need to be looked after as well.
The Texas Medical Association’s Committee on Physician Health and Wellness (PHW) can help you assess your work-life balance and determine your core values. When people live in alignment with their values, they are content and satisfied.
Start improving your overall well-being by following these simple tips, along with free CME courses developed by the PHW Committee:
- Set your priorities and improve your time management: Begin with categorizing the time you spend on daily activities by creating a weekly schedule. As time passes, your priorities will change, which will cause your schedule to change. When that happens, reallocate your time accordingly.
- Evaluate your finances (set short- and long-term goals): Create a budget and track spending. Work with a financial planner and plan for retirement. For more tips, check out the Aging Physicians: Practice Dilemmas CME course.
- Reassess your worth: Typically, women have earned thousands of dollars less than men by retirement age. Learn the communication and compensation basics to tackle the pay gap. The Power Reimagined - The Positive Role Women Contribute to Medicine course is available in the TMA education center.
- Get to know yourself all over again: Life struggles can seem impossible to solve. Learn to turn a dreary situation into a positive one in which you learn and grow, contribute, and engage more deeply. Upgrade your version of positivity and download TMA's newest course in coming months.
- Be your life manager: One of the best ways to assess your work-life balance is to project three years into the future and ask yourself simple questions like how much time you want to set aside for exploring and creating. Theoretically, everyone would like to increase this amount of time; however, work demands make that seem impossible. Taking a small step toward evaluating your current work-life balance will ultimately help you down the road. Learn how to take that step with the exercises available in the course an upcoming course available in a few months.
- Learn something new: More than half of states, including Texas, have legalized some form of marijuana and cannabidiol. Learn about pharmaceutical-grade cannabidiol and assess related ethical dilemmas in the course, Sticky Wellness Trends: Cannabidiol and Hemp.
- Strengthen your boundaries: Sometimes we are reluctant to ask and scared to misinterpret actions that could be viewed as invasive, rude, and worse – abusive. Have the confidence to communicate, ensure the safety of you and your patients, and identify disruptive behaviors in the course, Boundaries: What You Need to Know.
Speaking of ethics CME, TMA Physician Health and Wellness is your No. 1 stop. We are committed to providing health and wellness education accessible online, virtually, or live, including:
Choose from free one-hour programs to be held at your facility.
As part of your TMA membership, hundreds of CME and ethics hours are now available at no cost to you, compliments of TMA Insurance Trust.
Last Updated On
August 16, 2022
Originally Published On
July 01, 2019