The SurgeonMasters Podcast

Pump the brakes on your week and take 10 minutes to make your life as a surgeon just a little better…

This week on the Mini-Podcast we are talking about one of the 8 PRACTICEs of Highly Successful Surgeons, namely the ability to deal with problems and dilemmas with complex problem solving through simplicity, by essentially: Keeping It Simple. This is because the easier something is to understand and use, the more likely it is to be adopted and engaged with. When we get stuck in complexity and things seem harder than they are, that's when we need to change our practices, habits and routines and stop over-complicating the issue. 

To summarize, Keeping It Simple helps...

• When you feel you're climbing a mountain ("Just keep peddling!")

• When you feel you're running into a headwind ("Just keep running!")

• When you're feeling burned out ("Slow things down!")

Consider 2 options:

1. Use Keep It Simple (KIS)

2. Use the KISS strategy where the second 'S' is silence: you take one idea and silence the others

Keeping It Simple is a perfect example of how surgeons can improve their effectiveness inside and outside of the OR.

Pump the brakes on your week and take 10 minutes to make your life as a surgeon just a little better…

This week, we are welcoming back onto the mini-Podcast Dr. Todd Swenning, Director of Orthopaedic Trauma at Desert Regional Medical Center in Palm Springs, California, and Medical Director for the Institute of Clinical Orthopedics and Neurosciences. This week, Dr. Swenning will talk to us about political advocacy, specifically about the importance of becoming more involved in the decision-making process on behalf of our patients, medicine itself, healthcare and surgeons.

How does he suggest we become more involved? By doing the following:

• Start by reading about advocacy topics

• Write a letter on a topic that you're passionate about

• Next, go to an event with a politician, or a local event or fundraiser, and just get involved

If you’re not familiar with Dr. Todd Swenning, he is actively involved in policy making and advocacy with the Orthopaedic Trauma Association as well as the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons.  Dedication to education has resulted in his teaching principles of trauma management and patient advocacy both nationally and internationally.  Research projects in both fracture and trauma management have laid the foundation for his passion for trauma and fracture prevention and preparedness.

Political Advocacy is a perfect example of how surgeons can improve their effectiveness inside and outside of the OR.

Pump the brakes on your week and take 10 minutes to make your life as a surgeon just a little better…

This week on the Mini-Podcast we are welcoming back Karla McLaren, where we talk about emotional hygiene as a supportive mechanism to avoid the spread of emotions from one difficult situation to the next e.g. where you have to give a patient bad news about their health. Instead it offers a reset between situations that allows you to approach difficult situations with fresh energy and motivation.

How do you practice Emotional Hygiene? By doing the following:

• Take a breath in and out

• Visibly relax

• Create a sense of washing off the previous emotion and patient contact

• Create an event boundary around the previous emotion and patient contact 

If you're not familiar with Karla, she is an award-winning author, and social science researcher. Her lifelong work focuses on her grand unified theory of emotions, which revalues even the most “negative” emotions and opens startling new pathways into self-awareness, effective communication, and healthy empathy. She is the founder and CEO of Emotion Dynamics, LLC. Karla is also the author of The Art of Empathy: A Complete Guide to Life’s Most Essential Skill (2013), The Language of Emotions: What Your Feelings are Trying to Tell You (2010), and the multimedia online course Emotional Flow: Becoming Fluent in the Language of Emotions (2012).

Empathic Burnout is a perfect example of how surgeons can improve their effectiveness inside and outside of the OR.

Pump the brakes on your week and take 10 minutes to make your life as a surgeon just a little better…

This week on the Mini-Podcast we are welcoming back Karla McLaren, where we talk about empathy and how it applies to burnout for healthcare professionals. We discuss the difference between compassion fatigue and empathic burnout. Here are a few ways to identify whether it's fatigue or burnout :

1. Do you have control over your work product?

2. Do you have a healthy work environment?

3. Are the relationships you have, and management healthy?

If you have Empathic Burnout, it usually comes down to communication processes and skills in the workplace. How do you improve your control of your personal work environment?

By reviewing the processes you have in place for these 3 types of communication:

• Process to request attention from a busy person

• Process to admit you made a mistake

• Process to communicating a problem up, without danger

If you're not familiar with Karla, she is an award-winning author, and social science researcher. Her lifelong work focuses on her grand unified theory of emotions, which revalues even the most “negative” emotions and opens startling new pathways into self-awareness, effective communication, and healthy empathy. She is the founder and CEO of Emotion Dynamics, LLC. Karla is also the author of The Art of Empathy: A Complete Guide to Life’s Most Essential Skill (2013), The Language of Emotions: What Your Feelings are Trying to Tell You (2010), and the multimedia online course Emotional Flow: Becoming Fluent in the Language of Emotions (2012).

Empathic Burnout is a perfect example of how surgeons can improve their effectiveness inside and outside of the OR.

Pump the brakes on your week and take 10 minutes to make your life as a surgeon just a little better…

This week on the Mini-Podcast we are talking about visualization, which is the mental process of focusing on an outcome or successful completion, of a series of tasks. It's a mental practice that you can apply before taking action or doing an activity, and can be applied for positive change and performance improvement. Studies have shown that people who visualize ahead of time, are more able to adapt if things don't go to plan. 

How do you apply Visualization?

By doing the following:

• Visualize the  whole activity, to look at the hazards, approaches and expectations

• Anticipate the hazards, approaches and expectations and reinforce the end-goal

• Let the last thoughts be positive

Visualization is a perfect example of how surgeons can improve their effectiveness inside and outside of the OR.