Burnout In Healthcare Providers

Libby Rothschild : [00:00:01] I’m very excited today to be here with Dr. Jessica Louie, Pharm DAPH BCCP is the CEO of Clarity Simplify Align, where she coaches burnout professionals to simplify, to spark joy at work and home. She creates work-life harmony through simplifying and decluttering homes, schedules, and mental overload to achieve financial freedom and simplify eco-friendly living for your family. Jessica is a master-level certified Con Reid consultant and coach, and she combines her decluttering techniques with her unique clarify, simplify, align method to gain clarity of purpose, simplify physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual clutter and align work into your life, not the other way around. Jessica hosts the Burnout Doctor podcast weekly, helping listeners with burnout, well-being, decluttering, and simplifying. She’s also a board-certified critical care pharmacist and associate professor in Los Angeles, California. I’m excited to have Jessica here today. We actually connected at a conference called Biz Chicks, I think, a year or so ago in California and have kept in touch. So thank you for joining today’s episode, Jessica.

 

Jessica Louie: [00:01:15] Thank you for having me, Libby.

 

Libby Rothschild : [00:01:17] Well, I’m excited. I’m thrilled to have you, love the work that you’re doing. And I can’t wait for the listeners to hear a little bit more about the behind the scenes there. Anything that I left out from the introduction that you want to share with the listeners?

 

Jessica Louie: [00:01:31] No, that I mean, it is definitely a thorough bio and, you know, I really love helping people find the confidence to live intentionally because we have such unique skill sets in this world and everyone can have, you know, apply their unique skill set to create these really meaningful contributions to the world. So that’s why I wake up in the morning and that’s my why statement.

 

Libby Rothschild : [00:01:54] That is beautiful, and if you could just share a little bit about your own unique story, let us get to know you on a deeper level.

 

Jessica Louie: [00:02:02] Yes. So like you said, I am a board-certified critical care pharmacist. And that meant that I trained for nine years to get into that specialty through my bachelor’s degree, doctor’s degree, and then two years of residency training. And by the end of that training, around 2014, 2015, I started to burn out, and back then no one was really talking about burnout. So I actually had no idea that I was experiencing burnout. I thought that it was really normal, what I was going through. And for those of you who may not be familiar with burnout, it’s kind of displaying the three classic signs where I was really exhausted all the time, constantly bringing work home with me. I was an ICU pharmacist, so I was basically spending more hours in the hospital than I was spending at home. And then I was displaying cynicism or a negative viewpoint because I had relocated from Salt Lake City where I was doing my training back to Los Angeles, and the way hospital pharmacies were practicing was not to the highest ability and not in the best interest of patient safety. So I developed some negative viewpoints towards the way people were practicing in Los Angeles after coming from a very progressive program and then finally noticing the last sign of burnout, of a decrease in self-efficacy or a low sense of accomplishment. And that’s because I had poured thousands of hours into all these research projects over the last few years, prospective, retrospective studies, and had no publication to show for it. My research efforts were really squashed over and over again by journal rejections, and some of you maybe can relate to that because it does take a very long time to get things published in some peer-reviewed journals, and there’s a lot of politics behind that publication. So when I was experiencing all of this, I was just taking my job as an assistant professor at a university and I was really coping with all my stress and burnout by accumulating things. And a lot of times we would cope in different ways. I coped by shopping for clothing, mostly, shopping for home decor, and was filling my life with more certifications and letters after my name and a life event happened, unfortunately, where a family member did pass away very suddenly in my life and it really showed how life could be very short. I blame myself for a lot of it. And I decided after putting my family aside and living far away from them for a long time, I needed to live with intention. So I started to declutter and simplify my life. And that’s kind of what led to what I’m doing today.

 

Libby Rothschild : [00:04:50] That’s beautiful. Thank you for sharing that. When you said that you took responsibility for the family member, tell me more about what you mean by that.

 

Jessica Louie: [00:05:00] Yeah, so it’s kind of similar in the critical care pharmacy world and things, we do a lot of things with our patients. And I blame myself as someone who is a very high functioning health care professional, not seeing the signs and symptoms of her cancer and being able to help her on her ICU critical care journey that she went through over about six weeks in California and then, unfortunately, passed away at a young age. So I think that anyone who works in health care, when someone close to you has a diagnosis that looking back, you may have seen some of the signs and symptoms and you didn’t act on them is unfortunate. But it really reminds us of there’s a lot of preventive care in this world, and sometimes we need to take care of ourselves and our family members and make sure that we’re addressing some of their needs so we don’t see them in our hospital system either.

 

Libby Rothschild : [00:05:59] Yeah, that’s really powerful. And when you mention a story about burnout and your personal reflections, what I’d also like to do is have you share some stories about people you’ve worked with, maybe just one or two. How have they been able to identify burnout in their lives and through the work that you do and maybe a little bit about how they’ve been able to overcome that, even a small example is fine.

 

Jessica Louie: [00:06:23] Yeah, definitely, I think that, so I see a lot of pharmacists, a lot of health care professionals who come to me for burn out help, and usually, it’s because some type of life event happened, either something at work happened or something in their personal life, and that’s kind of like the breaking straw, kind of similar to my story. It is unfortunate that we let it go so long to get to that stage. But sometimes we need to hit rock bottom, that I consider I kind of hit rock bottom before I was able to transform and start making changes. So a lot of times the exhaustion and the negativity gets to people and then they seek help. And for me, as their coach, as an accountability partner, through that transformation, I really tend to customize, you know, what do they need in terms of other times it means that a client needs clarity in their life of thinking back to why they got into health care in the first place, thinking back to how does work fit into their life because a lot of times my clients associate their job title with their whole being, their whole world of how they define success. And a lot of times we can be very successful without having some significant job title or a place in our life. So that’s kind of where we start, gaining clarity of why we went into this and what is success and happiness mean to us because it’s very different for every person. I think that over the last couple of years, some people have kind of gotten onto what society says or what my parents say if we’re just transitioning into our adulthood right now and gaining clarity of that. So that’s usually the biggest transformation of how clear people are, because if you have clarity in your life, then you’re able to set up goals and make small changes in your life that are going to have big impacts. The other part of that is when clients come to me and they’re really overwhelmed with the amount of things and clutter in their life, either from not really owning their time, like email controls their life, or they feel like they’re on 24/7 for their work environment or for someone else in their life and transitioning that to setting up some simple boundaries and clearing some of that clutter, either if it’s physical or mental clutter out of their lives. That’s where I really see a lot of transformation because it is a very overwhelming state to be in.

 

Libby Rothschild : [00:08:58] Yeah, and when you talk about burnout, which makes a lot of sense, you know, we have these moments and we don’t always act on preventative care. Right? We wait until there’s a death or exhaustion or a panic attack or something where we have that moment that we can reflect on. Right? So I appreciate the example that you shared about someone in the past that was close to you and that was kind of the straw that broke the camel’s back for you. When it comes to burnout and clutter, can you talk about how those two relate and give us some examples of your work related to burnout and clutter?

 

Jessica Louie: [00:09:34] Mm-hmm. Yeah. So basically, first I’ll start off with how do I look? How do I view clutter? So clutter, in my opinion, is really anything that gets in our way of experiencing joy each day. Clutter is anything that really takes away energy and focus on what is most important to us. So that’s how I kind of view clutter. And there’s research out there over the past 30 years basically showing that cluttered spaces really leave us feeling anxious, helpless, and overwhelmed. And that’s because humans are really visual people, and one-third of our processing comes from visual processing versus smell or sounds. So when we see visually a cluttered space around us, either at our desk or in our home or our car, I can really start leading on to anxiety, and clutter is directly tied to cortisol levels, which are part of our stress levels, especially, they’ve shown, is higher in women than men. So when we have more cortisol, it can lead to more negative consequences and it can also lead to more difficulty focusing, basically because our brain can only process so much information and has so much attention span. So that’s kind of how I view how clutter relates to burn out because this increase in that cortisol and increase in that stress and prolonged chronic stress leads to burnout.

 

Libby Rothschild : [00:11:06] I love it. I think that’s so important. But can we take a moment to distinguish the clutter in the sense of physical and digital, the relation between the two? And what do you see in your clients? Because I think we can both take a moment to reflect on how digital clutter is just as important as physical clutter.

 

Jessica Louie: [00:11:25] Yes, definitely. So what I talk about clutter, I type it into four different types. So the physical one of the most obvious, tangible things that we see. The mental clutter is really affecting our ability to process information. And this is where I usually categorize digital clutter because digital clutter is usually affecting our ability to process a lot of information because we’re just on overload or it’s a very reactive stage because email is very reactive, you’re reacting to something that someone’s putting on your plate or social media. You’re reacting to something. So I term a lot of digital clutter into our mental overload type of clutter. And then the other two types are emotional in terms of affecting our ability to express feelings, especially since because of technology, it’s been great that we have new ways to communicate with one another, but it can be difficult for people to express emotions nowadays if they’re not physically seeing someone’s face and getting those facial recognition and using text messages and things that affect their ability to be very authentic and honest conversations. So that kind of gets back to how do we bring gratitude into our day and how do we journal feelings. And then finally, spiritual clutter, so affecting our energy levels, ability to be present at the moment. And that’s kind of how I view the four types of clutter, then we do a lot of work, usually on the mental side of clutter and visual clutter.

 

Libby Rothschild : [00:12:59] So I have a question about, and looking and thinking about two ends of the spectrum here. We have the person that, let’s assume a health care provider, whether it’s a dietitian who’s a listener or pharmacist, specifically who you serve. Now we have this person who’s on two ends of the spectrum. This person might be on the prevention side or they might have experienced some type of burnout situation, as you explained earlier. So my first question is, what do you see more often? Those who are trying to prevent this or those who’ve experienced some sort of burnout? Then the second question would be assuming you see more people who have experienced a death or something significant for burnout, how do we really cultivate a lifestyle and an environment of decreasing clutter before somebody had an episode that’s affected them negatively?

 

Jessica Louie: [00:13:52] That that’s a great question. So typically when I work with clients, they have experienced some type of burnout or high levels of stress and now we’re going in to help them reset it. I talk about resetting burnout basically because it technically can happen again in our lives. But now we’re into the prevention stage. Then in terms of preventing those types of things, I think it kind of goes back to sometimes we need to go against the status quo of what other people are doing in our lives or what other people in society are saying of being busy all the time or multitasking and kind of in the achievement type of stage and thinking about how do I want to schedule my time and my ideal lifestyle. So it’s really setting up that ideal lifestyle. I think Libby that you talk about this a lot of, you can set up your ideal lifestyle with how you batch out things that are important in your life. How do you use email as a communication tool that is not for emergency communication and things like that? So it’s basically going to, let’s say if it’s digital clutter, we’re going to clarify the purpose of it. So we’re clarifying what email is used for in our life and we get to define that or what is our phone use for in our life and we get to define that. So that means do we want it to, let’s say our phone, do we want it to be like a computer, like a lot of people use it as? And if we don’t want it to be that, then we can define and clarify that purpose and then simplify how we’re using it. So simplifying would be letting go of some of the apps and the programs on your phone or letting go of the subscription to different email subscribers that are not serving you, and it was just a season in your life that it served you. You can always resubscribe or always re-add on programs on your phone. It’s not as black and white as letting go of a physical item, but then we can assess and see if it aligns with our workflow and aligns with how we feel now that we’ve made that change in our life. So that kind of prevention stops are kind of just reallocating how we want to live our life and the ideal lifestyle we want to have and then living it out and then seeing how we feel afterward.

 

Libby Rothschild : [00:16:11] So important. So are you familiar with the 80/20 kinds of principle or law? What you’re explaining reminds me a lot about that. I mean, I can talk a little bit about that, but what are your thoughts? Maybe first define that and then talk about how that applies to clutter and burnout and being mindful.

 

Jessica Louie: [00:16:31] Yeah, so, I mean, basically, 20 percent of our productivity or outcomes come from the most important part of our workday, right? The 20 percent and 80 percent is kind of sometimes the cluttered part of our work life or our life in general. That’s not producing a lot of outcomes that are most important to us or define our success, how we define it. So I think that kind of relates to letting go of a lot of things in our lives and simplifying our lives gets us to that 20 percent that’s most important to us. I would love to hear if you have anything else to add to that, Libby, to that as well.

 

Libby Rothschild : [00:17:12] So this principle has changed my life, really 80/20 concept, which is understanding that not all inputs are the same. So when it comes to, for example, it can be translated into a lot of different aspects. But if we’re looking at the apps on our phones, we only really use less than 20 percent of the apps, so it’s a matter of taking a look at everything that we have going on and eliminating the things that we’re not doing or that are not serving us. That’s going to help us live more intentionally and decrease clutter, and that’s just one of many examples. But if we’re looking at 20 percent of the outputs in our life are going to come from 20 percent of our effort. So it’s our responsibility as entrepreneurs to identify what is the highest level of outputs that we can do and achieve to get to the maximum and the best results. If we can identify that and think about it critically, we can improve our lives and decrease burnout and then really create more meaning and eliminate clutter. It’s not an easy thing to do, but if we’re thinking about this intentionally and your work just reminds me of this, I think it’s a really important thread in our lives and our common discussion so that we can really be happy and achieve the meaning that we want to achieve. Otherwise, we’re always going to be bogged down with some form of clutter if we’re not really thinking critically about the most necessary digital-physical things that we need to have in our lives so that we can eliminate the things that we don’t need.

 

Jessica Louie: [00:18:48] Yes, I love how you explain that, Libby.

 

Libby Rothschild : [00:18:51] Yeah, and so what other tips do you have? It’s easier said than done. A lot of us, I would say, I’m going to go ahead and suggest that many of the listeners are not even aware. So we’re in different phases here. They’re not even aware of all of the clutter they have in their lives. This is a really high-level conversation. We have to think critically about all the clutter that we have across the board, and it has to be consistent. Right? It’s not just one day you think about it, it’s an ongoing kind of a constant thing that we think about. So how do we become more aware and then how do we reduce the burnout and/or clutter in our lives to achieve the outcome and live our best lives with more intentionality?

 

Jessica Louie: [00:19:35] Yeah, I mean, I definitely agree in terms of the first step is awareness of how am I feeling in my environment right now? And you can start with where you’re sitting, you know, listening to this podcast right now. How do you feel in this environment? And I think the biggest thing is to think about how you feel, not necessarily like how it esthetically looks because it’s more important how it invokes the feeling for you and what feeling if you don’t like that feeling it evokes, how are we going to get it to the feeling in your ideal lifestyle? So I think that’s the first step. Writing that down, you can take 5, 10 minutes to really critically think about that and then starting small in terms of if that is right now in your workspace where you are as an entrepreneur and practice right now, start with that area in terms of maybe you want to set aside an hour of your workweek to remove everything from your desk. Right? Remove everything from it, sort it into categories and then pick up, let’s say this is physical clutter. Pick up each item and ask yourself, is this bringing me joy? If you don’t really understand that question, is it useful in your life? Does it have a function in your life or is it for future joy, which is some of our books or textbooks and things, and answer it honestly to yourself, yes or no? And if it’s a yes, keep it and find a permanent location for it on your desk space that is going to serve you. Clutter accumulates because it’s a failure putting something away into a proper location. Right? So just finding that proper location that we want to always return the item to. And then if it’s a no, let it go with gratitude because it was a learning experience somehow, if it has a tag on it and still you’ve never used it, it taught you something about a buying decision and moving forward, then that’s the lifestyle of before we purchase something before, we bring something into our homes, whether that’s new or used, we’re really intentional with is this going to serve me and bring me joy, a functional joy. And if it’s a no, we need to let it go and to give that gratitude, stay with it. So that’s kind of an example of starting small with some kind of physical clutter, and some of those concepts can then apply to some of the other types of clutter as well.

 

Libby Rothschild : [00:22:00] Yeah. And what do you think people struggle with the most? I know there’s clutter with books, although I would argue that that’s pretty valuable, but clothes, physical things like in your room or desk, what do people tend to have the hardest time with?

 

Jessica Louie: [00:22:18] So the hardest category is usually sentimental and that technically, if you’re following the Kamari method, which is what I usually use for simplifying, it’s our last and fifth category and sentimental is a lot of things that our photos and memory box and things like that. So usually that’s the hardest category, and that’s why we tackle it last because we’ve built out a skill set of decision making of what brings us joy and applying that 20 80 rule and things of quality over quantity. So that’s what we tackle last. I think it’s also important to remember that clutter didn’t accumulate in our lives overnight. A lot of times we want to let go of clutter overnight, but usually, clutter accumulated over several years to potentially decades, and we’ve moved maybe multiple times during that time frame. So remembering that letting go of that clutter throughout our lives, it’s going to be a journey that might take you several days, weeks, or months. We want to be intentional in that process so we don’t elicit any regret or guilt, because we made decisions that were not very thoughtful or critical.

 

Libby Rothschild : [00:23:31] That’s great and anything else that you want to add, do you have any kind of particular stories from clients as far as how they’ve been able to eliminate clutter or any epiphanies, they’ve been able to come to, whether it’s in the awareness stage or maybe developing or adopting some habits where they’ve been able to create more meaning from adopting some of what you’re discussing?

 

Jessica Louie: [00:23:56] Yeah, I think that one of the biggest hurdles, I think, for a lot of people is first to determine why are you bringing in a lot of items into our life through buying or through gifting and acknowledging how things come into our lives and shopping habits. So those are usually some of the biggest awareness pieces because unfortunately, financial stressors are some of the biggest components of burnout because of the financial strain that it puts on our lives in combination with, as being a healthcare professional, potentially student loans as well. And then the other thing would be realizing kind of a shift in mindset about gifting. We recently had the holiday season and everything, and we have gifting seasons throughout the year for many people, and a lot of times people have a lot of trouble with that season because we automatically usually associated gifts with a physical item and kind of shifting our mindset around it. Gifting is the gift is not about the physical items, about the actual exchanging of some thoughtfulness and kindness to another person. I really encourage my clients and my community to think about how can we gift experiences in our lives that will create memories in people’s lives or if you want to have a physical gift in your life, more consumable type of gifts so that we aren’t adding clutter to each other’s lives. If the gift is not aligned with your values, that it’s OK to let it go because it’s not about the physical item that someone gave you. It’s about the gesture and the kindness that’s associated with it.

 

Libby Rothschild : [00:25:37] I love that. That’s something my mom always taught me, to value a gift and be grateful for the gift and not be so obsessed about what the gift is and just think of it as the act of a gift. And I think that focusing on experiences is important and that must be a huge topic for people. Right? Because it crosses over the sentimental and people don’t want to let go of stuff because it was a gift, but it really has outstayed its welcome.

 

Jessica Louie: [00:26:05] Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah, and a lot of times with sentimental items, I mean, I’ve had so many clients where we’ve downsized their homes and things and a lot of times a lot of sentimental things are large pieces of furniture that just don’t align very well, especially living in a Los Angeles area and taking a photo and writing down the story behind that sentimental item is what’s bringing us joy. Usually, the storytelling behind it and then having a photo of it, that actually sometimes sitting at that huge dining room table that we never use. So it’s kind of shifting that mindset around storytelling and memory.

 

Libby Rothschild : [00:26:44] Yeah, and that’s very powerful. Easier said than done because it’s about adopting practice where you’re motivated to do that. So how do your clients and people in your community stay motivated? I mean, this is such an important topic, but it’s difficult to adopt some of these habits. What would you suggest for somebody who’s interested, but not really sure if they can really stick with it.

 

Jessica Louie: [00:27:14] So I think the first thing is writing down, what do you want? Like what’s your end goal? How do you want to feel at the end of the day? How do you want to feel at the end of your cluttering process? Because technically there is a time frame associated with it. So with the Kumari method, we end the five categories in a certain time frame because we only do it once in our life, and then we’ve developed habits related to it. So approaching it from we know we’re going to de-clutter and simplify by X date because we want to invite people over. We have a big celebration or something or life, I think helps so that it’s not some lifelong thing that we’re continuing a cycle with.

 

Libby Rothschild : [00:28:19] OK, so how do you cultivate joy at work?

 

Jessica Louie: [00:28:29] So I love talking about this topic because no matter what type of work setting, you’re in, you’re able to apply a lot of these concepts. When I first start working with people, my number one tip for bringing joy into your day is to think about how are you going to prime yourself for joy? And this kind of goes back to if you’ve ever been in a classroom setting, your teacher usually tells you what’s coming up, your objectives for the day, and what’s coming up in the lecture. And this is the kind of the same concept of how do we prime our brains for what’s going to come? I talk about asking yourself three simple questions. The first question is, what is one thing I can get excited about today? This is something that we know is going to happen today. It’s not related to some external force like the weather or anything. So we’re priming our brains to find that joy and excitement. The next question is, sometimes there are challenges in our lives, so what is a situation that might stress me out today and how is my best self-going to handle it so that we can address it ahead of time and prime ourselves to bring our best self to that situation. The third question is really how do we spread joy throughout our day? Thinking about who is someone I could surprise with a note, a gift, a thank you today, whether that be a short video message or an audio message or how can I hug someone today in my household? Something that small that spreads joy to someone else in your life, I think is really important. So that’s how I pride myself for joy. I highly recommend other people do that as well. It can really change your feelings throughout the day. That’s my number one tip for bringing joy into your day. Then if you would like me to, I can go into a couple of other tips as well for cultivating joy.

 

Libby Rothschild : [00:30:21] Let’s wrap up with a couple more tips. These are great.

 

Jessica Louie: [00:30:24] Yeah. So kind of getting back to the mental load and the mental clutter throughout the day, a lot of people tell me that they just feel this responsibility of having to remember all the things for their family members or for themselves and their business. So one tip is thinking about how can I close the files in my brain because there’s too much there. So I recommend if something takes you two minutes or less that you do it right away. So if it means that it will take me two minutes or less to respond to that email, let’s do it right now and let it go and archive that email. If it’s the dishes are sitting in the sink, if it takes two minutes or less to finish the dishes, let’s do it right now or make your bed, you know, little things that add up that you’re thinking about. Oh, I have to remember to do that, or I have to remember to write down an ingredient for meal time to get at the grocery store. Let’s just put it in our calendar and then we won’t forget about it and it’s there in our calendar when we’re going to do it in our lives. So I call it closing the files in our brain and then thinking about this is a really simple example of when we’re using the language of, I have to do something that’s a shift that language into, I get to or I choose to do something in our lives. A lot of times this can be a little difficult if we don’t realize we’re using that language like the have to, I have to go to that meeting, I have to go to work today in a simple shift of I choose to, I get to and I’m excited about it or there is some type of joy I’m looking forward to can really prime ourselves for more happiness, more positivity in our life. So those are a couple more tips as well.

 

Libby Rothschild : [00:32:11] Those are fantastic. Anything else that you want to wrap us with before we finish our conversation today? I think this is a really important topic and episode, and I’m really glad you’re able to share your story with us.

 

Jessica Louie: [00:32:25] Thank you, Libby. I just want to remind everyone that if you have felt any feelings of stress or burnout in your life that you’re not alone. I know that sometimes it can feel like you’re really alone in that journey. But there’s a lot of other people who have experienced it, and it’s something that I want people to talk openly about their stories so that everyone can get the help that they need and feel that they’re on a journey together with a community.

 

Libby Rothschild : [00:32:53] That’s great and where can they find that community? Is that something that you’ve cultivated online? Do you want to let us know? Remind us where we can find you on social.

 

Jessica Louie: [00:33:00] Yes. So the best place is to listen to the Burnout Doctor podcast with weekly episodes every Thursday. And then if you’re interested in more of these topics, you can join us for our free workshop on cultivating joy in your life over at drjessicalouie.com/joy, and I would love to hang out with you on LinkedIn or Instagram.

 

Libby Rothschild : [00:33:22] Fantastic.