Hi, my name is Anisha Patel, I'm an Associate Professor of Dermatology at the UT MD Anderson Cancer Center and UT McGovern Medical School. I was asked to give this talk on burnout prevention and work-life balance, and I'm flattered that I was invited to do so, but I have a big disclosure in that like all of us, I am a work in progress. This is a topic that I think we all put a lot of effort into in our lives, and it really is critically linked to our personal happiness, and I just wanted to share some of the tips that have helped me along the way and the insight that I have gained from peers and mentors alike. So there's two main things I wanted to talk about. It is 4.30 p.m. on a Friday, I just finished clinic, and in keeping with having good work-life balance, this is going to be a quick talk and hopefully a couple actionable points that resonate with you. So the first is do what you love, and the second is set boundaries. I think these are all things that we have trouble doing. We pushed through undergrad, through med school, through residency, and it's hard to sort of reframe as you start your work-life as an attendant, so do what you love. I kind of divided this into a few steps. The first is know what you love, which I think is really the hardest part about this. You really have to sort of look inside yourself and say, okay, like what makes me happy during the day? Does individual patient interactions make me happy? Does doing procedures make me happy? Do my coworkers contribute significantly to my happiness? So I know for me, building relationships is really important, whether it's with my patients, my clinic team, the residents and med students, my friends, my family, whether I'm at work or at home, building relationships is really key to how I feel about how my day went. And then being engaged in whatever I'm doing. I think I've been accused of being like intense, but it's just the way that I like to interact when I'm at work. I like to be at work, and I like to be 100% in it. When I'm at home, the same way, when I'm on vacation, if I'm exercising, that's just how I like to do things and what I have accepted about myself. So this kind of translates to at work, I love helping patients. I feel very satisfied when we make a difficult diagnosis, when we come up with a creative management plan, when we do something that really makes a difference for a patient that day. Teaching is so important to me, and I get a lot of satisfaction out of it. So working in an academic institution was really important to me. And then I like being really good at something. I like that as derms, we own the skin, we can look at a lot of different lesions and diseases and know what they are. But then also having an area of dermatology that I specialize in, and at MD Anderson, it was sort of an easy fit and natural selection to focus on cutaneous toxicities for cancer therapies. And so really, this goes with the level of engagement, but really diving into an area of dermatology and being good at something. And outside of work, I love spending time with my family and being engaged in their lives, being active. And then this is that same engagement where I don't just like to jog, I like to run like national power calf marathons. And I like to explore the world. So this is traveling, nature traveling, city traveling, just being out and about in the world. So I think really recognizing the parts of your lives that bring you satisfaction is such an important part to structuring your work-life balance. And then knowing what you don't love. And so I don't love feeling like I'm not valued. If a patient is upset with me or is flippant with my advice, if my team is upset with me or I feel like I'm being taken for granted at home, those things can really affect how I feel about myself and how I feel about my day. And the other thing I don't like is feeling like I'm being micromanaged. I think this is an important thing when you're looking at your boss and your practice and how much freedom you have and how you structure your day-to-day. This is part of why I enjoy being a derm and derm path. My derm path days, I have more flexibility. Obviously, on clinic days, there's less flexibility. But I still have the freedom to start clinic when I want, have my template scheduled the way I want, do excisions, not do excisions. And I think that's really important to how that perceived freedom is very important to how I feel about my work life. And then the hardest part of knowing what you love, knowing what you don't love, but then making it happen. So I think we have to be reasonable, we have to be patient, and we have to be creative problem solvers. This is what I always tell new faculty when they join our department, is that this might not be the perfect job when you start, but you have the power to make it into the job that's perfect for you. And really pay attention to what's going on around you, where you can get the things that you need and also give the department the things that you need. So really being creative in how you come up with these solutions is important. But and also keeping in mind that we are, our job is to help patients and that's our primary goal in sort of being in clinic. And so I think it's really a balance and rationalizing that balance to yourself is important to sort of your overall happiness and how you feel about the work you're doing. Setting boundaries, I think this is really hard, especially the way many of us were trained with the long work hours and not really having the ability to say no. And as we further our careers, we have that ability to draw boundaries. So I think for me, it is important to look at like how much I will work every day, how much I will play every day, and really picking a few things to focus on personally and professionally and prioritizing those. I quickly learned that I cannot prioritize everything. And I think that's one very good way to burn yourself out and get stressed out. But really like pick a few reasonable things and be adaptable. Like if you're looking for a new house, you're going to have to prioritize that. If you have a new baby, you have to prioritize that. If you start a new job, you have to prioritize that. And really being reasonable with ourselves and being adaptable as to what our priorities are in this stage of life. And I've had some great mentors through the AAD and through MD Anderson. And one thing that has really been emphasized to me is that you don't have to do everything all at once. And so really giving yourself the flexibility to prioritize different things at different phases of life is important. And then set yourself up for success. So this sounds very trite, but you want to give yourself a schedule that is doable and not take on too many projects. But really look at what you can handle and what your bandwidth is. And then letting go of ego, I think, is really important. And maybe not in the way that you traditionally think of it, but like the world will not stop if we go on vacation. The world will not stop if we are sick and have to cancel clinic. I think it's really important for us to remember that we can rely on our colleagues. Our colleagues can rely on us. And that's important for us to sort of let go sometimes and let the world ride itself without us being there to manage it. So I just had a few pearls to wrap this up. So the first is don't stress about things that you can't change. I think this is a lesson that everyone tries to teach us, but it becomes even more so when you're working for a large practice or an academic institution and really identifying where you can be impactful and affect change through creative problem solving, through adaptability, and where there's things that are just not in your control and figuring out how to work around them. Self-awareness is really key. And I think this was a big struggle I had when I first started looking for jobs. I wasn't sure what kind of job I wanted because I had never really thought about how I enjoyed working and what I really enjoyed about dermatology. And then I think I struggled with this next one for probably the next two for the last five or the first five years of being out in academics. So the grass is not always greener on the other side. It's easy to look at my friends in private practice or my friends who are doing locums and see like, oh, they have all this freedom or, oh, they make higher salaries than me. But it really is looking within yourself and saying, these are the things that satisfy me every day. And I know that the teaching, the patient care, those are really important to me. And I get those things from my current job. And then avoiding professional jealousy. I think this is a constant struggle, though. I try to remind myself that I need to look at the work that I do and make sure that I feel satisfied from how I'm being compensated and valued for it. And for me, the compensation is not just a salary, but it's also the opportunity to get to work with residents, the opportunity to build mentoring relationships with med students, the opportunity to participate in conferences and educational programs. There's a lot of parts of my job that fill me up that aren't so black and white on paper. And I think really looking at all the opportunities that each of us has and how we're able to take advantage of those is really important. So I appreciate the time to speak with you today. A quick 10 minutes to talk about burnout and work-life balance. And I wish you the best of luck. Thank you.

burnout prevention

work-life balance

doing what you love

setting boundaries

satisfaction in personal and professional life