Subscribe to The Podcast by KevinMD. Watch on YouTube. Catch up on old episodes!
Family physician Laura Suttin discusses her KevinMD article, “An argument against time management.” In this episode, Laura explores the pressures physicians face in trying to adhere to strict time management practices, which often lead to feelings of inadequacy and burnout. She shares her personal struggles with balancing work and personal life, highlighting the importance of aligning one’s energy with natural rhythms rather than rigid schedules. Laura emphasizes the value of authenticity, self-awareness, and embracing the ebb and flow of daily life to reduce stress and enhance both personal and professional fulfillment. She offers actionable strategies for physicians to move away from traditional time management techniques and towards a more energy-focused approach, fostering a healthier and more balanced lifestyle.
Our presenting sponsor is DAX Copilot by Microsoft.
DAX Copilot, by Microsoft, is your AI assistant for automated clinical documentation and workflows. DAX Copilot allows physicians to do more with less and turn their words into a powerful productivity tool. DAX Copilot automates clinical documentation—making it available in the EHR within minutes—and clinical workflows, including referral letters, after-visit summaries, style and formatting customizations, and more.
70 percent of physicians who use DAX Copilot say it improves their work-life balance while reducing feelings of burnout and fatigue. Patients love it too! 93 percent of patients say their physician is more personable and conversational, and 75 percent of physicians say it improves patient experiences.
Discover AI-powered solutions for clinical documentation and workflows. Click here to see a 12-minute DAX Copilot demo.
VISIT SPONSOR → https://aka.ms/kevinmd
SUBSCRIBE TO THE PODCAST → https://www.kevinmd.com/podcast
RECOMMENDED BY KEVINMD → https://www.kevinmd.com/recommended
GET CME FOR THIS EPISODE → https://www.kevinmd.com/cme
I’m partnering with Learner+ to offer clinicians access to an AI-powered reflective portfolio that rewards CME/CE credits from meaningful reflections. Find out more: https://www.kevinmd.com/learnerplus
Transcript
Kevin Pho: Welcome to the show. Subscribe at KevinMD.com/podcast. Today, we welcome back Laura Suttin. She’s a family physician, and today’s KevinMD article is “An argument against time management.” Laura, welcome back to the show.
Laura Suttin: Thanks for having me. It’s good to be here.
Kevin Pho: All right, so tell us what this KevinMD article is about.
Laura Suttin: I wrote this article when the area where I live—South Texas—was experiencing a deep freeze. We lost power for several days. I really noticed how much of my energy was depleted during that time and how much of our natural rhythms we really have to honor. Since I wrote that article, I’ve had so many other examples come up, but it really boils down to making sure we are working with our bodies and not against them, listening to our bodies when we need rest, or when we need to try to find some more energy. It was really just the first example for me that, when we talk about managing our time, it’s not so much about managing our time but managing our energy. Honoring those ebbs and flows has been really, really important for me.
Kevin Pho: So this happened a few years ago with that deep freeze in Texas. Exactly how did that affect you, and how did that interfere with your normal workflow and normal energy flow as a physician?
Laura Suttin: We were lucky enough that everyone in my immediate family was fine. I know not everyone was as lucky. We didn’t have power for three days, and I lived in a drafty old house. It was very cold. We didn’t have hot water, so we didn’t have internet. Work came to a halt. My daughter is a teenager, so her school came to a halt as well. We were very limited in what we were able to do.
When we don’t have those things, and it just becomes a matter of, “Well, I can read a book, but only until sunset,” and in February sunset is pretty early, you really go into this mode of noticing how your body feels, noticing the physical sensations, and having to honor that. I noticed I needed so much more sleep because the cold was taking such a toll on me. I was craving food I didn’t normally crave. It was really this experience of realizing it was temporary but also listening to my body: What does my body need, and not denying what I needed in that moment?
Kevin Pho: So, in essence, that pause let you listen to your body. Of course, as physicians, we rarely get that type of pause—we’re always on to the next patient, the next chart, the next shift, the next on-call date, and so on. Translate what you realized about that pause into what you did in terms of how you manage time as a physician in your clinic or hospital.
Laura Suttin: You said it: we as physicians are not trained to pause and process what we’re going through. The examples we get—and what we’re trained to do, what we’re literally rewarded for—are just moving on: next patient, next rounds, next shift, next day, whatever that looks like. Yet that will catch up to us in our bodies.
When we are able to stop and acknowledge what we’re going through, it can have such a big impact. Also, taking care of our basic needs—like, when do we need to eat, when do we need to sleep, when do we need to use the restroom? Those are things we denied ourselves, and we were denied in our training. It’s natural to go through these rhythms—circadian rhythms, seasonal rhythms, or times when things are traumatic and we have to slow down. We have to honor that as part of nature. It’s not a weakness; it’s part of our biology.
Kevin Pho: After this event happened and you realized you had to listen to your own body, did you make any changes in terms of how you practiced, or your schedule at your workplace?
Laura Suttin: I didn’t immediately, but over time I realized how important it is to notice that inkling when I’m starting to get sick and might need extra sleep, or when something’s going on where I just need to take a step back and take a pause. About a year after I wrote that article, I had major surgery—an unplanned, though not emergent, surgery—and that was another time I realized how much rest my body needed. I had to honor that.
Since then, events have happened over time that remind me, “Oh yeah, I need to listen to myself, listen to my body.” Now, as an entrepreneur, I’m in a different role, and I’m able to be flexible enough with my schedule that I can honor those needs more easily than I could at that time.
Kevin Pho: What would that look like—simply seeing fewer patients during the day, adjusting your hours to be more flexible, taking fewer call shifts? In a typical physician workplace, how would honoring your body manifest?
Laura Suttin: It can be something as simple as taking a 30-minute lunch break or closing the door to meditate for five minutes and asking your staff not to interrupt you, or taking that bathroom break when you need it instead of seeing that next patient who’s been waiting for an hour. It can be really small things like that.
I have also seen examples—clients I’ve worked with—who adjusted their schedule after coming back from parental leave or medical leave so they could meet the needs of their families. It doesn’t have to be drastic; it can be something very simple. Just eating when we need to and going to the bathroom when we need to can make a huge difference.
Kevin Pho: We talked about how the training and education of physicians are built on self-sacrifice. How difficult is it for you, or for some of the clients or other physicians you talk to, to adopt this mentality where sometimes they need to put themselves first?
Laura Suttin: It is really difficult. I mentioned dopamine earlier because we get rewarded for that self-sacrifice in our training, and that reward might come in the form of recommendation letters, good grades, or coveted rotations. This goes back to probably high school, college, whenever those of us who were first starting to become physicians began. A lot of us probably had something in our med school acceptance letter like, “Well, I’m not going to ask somebody to do something that I could do myself,” which becomes a badge of honor. We get rewarded for that, and it builds dopamine pathways. When we reach the point where we can’t continue that pace—because it’s not sustainable—it’s really, really hard to break that habit, like any bad habit triggered by dopamine. Our bodies become almost addicted to it.
Kevin Pho: Talk about how the expectations of society and our administrators still have that more traditional view of physicians as self-sacrificing. If they see physicians taking a little bit more time and putting themselves first, how does that tension manifest?
Laura Suttin: It’s a tough conversation. I know there’s been discussion lately, even in the popular press, about this kind of generational gap between physicians. Some older physicians worked 80- to 120-hour workweeks. I’m not saying younger physicians don’t, but younger physicians are pushing back, saying, “Wait, I need work-life balance,” while older physicians say, “We didn’t have work-life balance.” I don’t know the right answer, but 120-hour workweeks clearly aren’t sustainable or healthy for physicians, and that’s not healthy for patients either. Patients who are seen by overworked, burned-out physicians have worse outcomes. It’s not healthy for anyone in the health care system to have this self-sacrificial mentality.
When I talk with colleagues who work directly with students and residents, they’re advocating for a better way—even in small steps, like taking bathroom breaks or meal breaks. That can have a huge impact.
Kevin Pho: Are you seeing that generation gap among your coaching and physician clients—maybe older physicians a bit more hesitant to put themselves first?
Laura Suttin: Yes, because that’s how they were trained; it’s ingrained in them. When they pass that along, it becomes really difficult if that’s the only model they’ve seen. It’s an interesting dynamic right now, and I don’t know how it will shake out. I imagine it will be some sort of happy medium, but it’s definitely an interesting conversation.
Kevin Pho: How does that discussion go if an older physician who’s burned out from all the hours and self-sacrifice comes to you, yet they’re reluctant to put themselves first?
Laura Suttin: They might feel like they’re unwilling to put themselves first, but with enough digging, we can usually find something they want, like adjusting their schedule so they can spend time with their grandchildren or take up a hobby. Rarely do I see a physician who’s been working 60 or 70 hours a week for 30 years who doesn’t want something else in life. So we figure out where that physician is, what their individual goals are, and we work on those together.
Kevin Pho: What are some actionable steps that we can share with physicians listening to prevent them from reaching a point of burnout and wondering why they have to self-sacrifice so much? What can they do earlier on?
Laura Suttin: First, it’s not a personal weakness if you have these ingrained models or thoughts like, “I can’t do these things for myself.” This is how we were trained. You’re not alone, and it’s important to remember that. Then, think of something small you can do. It might be as small as using the restroom when you need to, or taking that lunch break, or saying no to a walk-in patient at 4:59 because you’ve said you would go to your child’s soccer game. Exercise that agency. If you don’t advocate for yourself and take that for yourself, nobody else will.
Kevin Pho: Why is it that in our profession, something as simple as going to the bathroom or taking a lunch break is a big deal, as though it signifies putting ourselves first?
Laura Suttin: Yeah, it’s biology, and it is crazy. I was talking to someone about this yesterday—about the airline industry and mandated rest for pilots and flight attendants. I’m sure many of us have been on a plane that got canceled because the crew timed out. I wouldn’t want to get on a plane with a pilot who said, “I didn’t get much sleep, but it’s all right, I’ll power through.” We need to treat our physicians the same way.
Kevin Pho: You’ve been coaching for a while now, and you wrote this article a few years ago. Have you seen the needle move when it comes to health care organizations, hospitals, and clinics better addressing physicians’ natural rhythms and perhaps not asking them to self-sacrifice so much?
Laura Suttin: I have started to see organizations and health care groups that recognize the impact of burnout and really want to see a change. I’m very hopeful about that, and I enjoy working with groups to help them make the changes they need so physicians are thriving.
Kevin Pho: What are some examples of those changes?
Laura Suttin: Hiring coaches is one. I really feel like every physician needs a coach. LeBron James has a coach—probably multiple coaches—so our physicians need coaching too. Also, really listening to what the physicians need, rather than putting a bandage on some of these burnout symptoms. Organizations are making changes to schedules, accommodating alternate scheduling options, and understanding that physicians are human and need to take care of themselves first.
Kevin Pho: We’re talking to Laura Suttin, a family physician, and today’s KevinMD article is “An argument against time management.” Laura, let’s end as we always do: share some take-home messages for the KevinMD audience.
Laura Suttin: If you feel like you always have to sacrifice yourself as a physician, remember you’re not alone. Reach out for help. Start small—take back that agency for yourself in some small way. It is not a sign of weakness for our bodies to need attention. That just means we’re human, so don’t ignore it, because it will come back to bite you.
Kevin Pho: Laura, thank you again for sharing your perspective and insight, and thanks again for coming back on the show.
Laura Suttin: Thanks for having me.
