FollowFew careers are rewarding as being a doctor. You get to make a positive difference to people’s health and lives each day; the work is varied and interesting, and you can make a great living working as a doctor with multiple career progression opportunities. However, while there are many perks to being a doctor, many also struggle to manage their lifestyle as the work can be so demanding, intense, and stressful. With this in mind, keep reading for a few lifestyle tips for doctors that should prove useful and help you make the most out of this rewarding career.
Keep Work & Home Separate
One of the most important – yet hardest – things to do is to keep your work and home separate. When you are dealing with difficult and often distressing cases each day, it can be hard to switch off at the end of your shift. A healthy work-life balance is something that you will develop over time, but you will find that taking a shower and getting changed, doing an activity at the end of the day, and not talking about work will help.
Organize Your Free Time
Work as a doctor can be incredibly demanding, so it is important that you can really make the most out of your free time. This means that you need to organize your free time to not just crash when you get home, including scheduling time for relaxing, spending time with loved ones, exercising, and sleeping.
Lead A Healthy Lifestyle
It is easy to neglect your own health when caring for others and having such a demanding job, but leading a healthy lifestyle is important for your own well-being and job performance. You need to eat a healthy diet, so many find that meal prep is a good way to do this. You also need to find a form of exercise that you enjoy and can fit into your schedule and try to get between 7 and 9 hours of sleep each night.
Manage Your Finances
You also need to stay on top of your finances so that this is not an area that adds to your stress. For locum doctors, you might find it hard to get approved for a mortgage as you do not have a permanent employment contract and not enough records of self-employment. However, you can get a mortgage for locum doctor with the help of a specialist that has access to lenders that understand the financial situation of locum doctors.
Focus On Your Mental Health
Many doctors can struggle with mental health due to the demanding and often upsetting nature of the work. This is why you need to focus on your mental health, find ways to de-stress and relax after work and ensure that you are taking time off to relax when needed.
These lifestyle tips should be useful for any doctor and hopefully help you create a healthy work-life balance and get the most out of your career.
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Not to put doctors down, but if you decide to marry one, know full well that you’ll never be top priority, his patients are. It is indeed a sacrifice on your part, never mind the prestige of being married to a doctor! I dated a doctor for close to 5 years, lovely guy but I couldn’t do it. So, we ended things, nothing messy. I think my Mum was totally devastated!
Anyways, we still stay in touch after all these years; thank goodness he went on to marry a very nice lady who is understanding and selfless.
Some of the questions we ask at the medical school interviews touch on time management and stress relief. You get the usual of taking time to exercise, spend time with friends/ family etc. My fave answer was this gal who said she would schedule an hour where she would do NOTHING! I think that is such a simple but grand idea!
Thanks for sharing your story, Chris.
It’s every mother’s wish for their daughters to marry a doctor, hey? I think I would too