Anger Management in Medical School

Hey, everyone.  Thanks for your readership.  I have a few comments on my blog I've yet to reply to and I haven't gotten around to it because I'm studying for a big exam and I wanted to leave a thoughtful reply to you commenters.

Anyway, a big thing I wanted to talk about was managing your stress and anger during medical training.  This is because embarking on medical training can automatically bring a lot of stress into your life.

While yes, I've done my psychiatry rotation, but this isn't professional medical advice or anything. I just wanted to talk about stress and anger.  Fortunately, I've never required anger management, and hopefully you won't either.

There's a quotation that more or less says "Anger is temporary insanity," and I definitely think that when people get angry, they're not as rational as they are.  Some people get so angry that all they just vent, verbally, physically, or both, and they aren't thinking about the consequences it can have.

So what's stressful about medical school and medical training?

The list would be infinite, but the biggest sources of stress are the expectation to perform, to match into a good residency in a location you want, the stress of  18-30+ hour periods of work with exams thrown on there, trying to save lives at critical points in the shock room, floor, operating room, the hierarchical nature of medicine, helping patients who are getting close to the point of no return, dealing with irreversible diseases, and balancing your social, family, and romantic life on top of all that as well as maintaining your own health.

It's pretty stressful, and I can't really do it justice without illustrating things with a really long post. You just kind of have to live it to experience it.

So how do we manage it all and avoid a meltdown?

Become positive.  It sounds really shallow, but it's the most simple solution.  Here's some examples:

Problem: You gained a lot of weight because you haven't had the time to take care of yourself and you just see yourself gaining more weight.

Solution: Exercise is not an option in today's world, you have to get around to doing it somehow if you're physically able.  Get up earlier in the morning so you have that extra time to work out.  The 15-20 extra minutes of sleep won't help you feel more rested when you're chronically sleep deprived as it is.  Get out there and get moving.

Focus on how great you'll feel after losing weight and its positive effects on your cardiovascular physiology.

Problem:  Everything in medical training is stressful and spilling over into your social life.

Solution: Don't complain.  Some people just complain non-stop and just because others aren't commenting about your complaints, it doesn't mean that doesn't stress them out in turn.  It pushes people away and it makes you look negative and like someone with poor coping skills.

Think about what you can do to change things, and adapt.  Exercise, do a sport, read, take a break, anything positive to release that stress.  Medical training is like living in a foxhole in a war: you don't stop getting bombarded with problems.

There's a quote in Band of Brothers that I apply to medical training: "We're paratroopers, Lieutenant. We're supposed to be surrounded."  In medicine, people are sick, things are complicated, and life isn't simple.  If it were, we probably wouldn't need medical care.

So, accept that medical training is complicated, work hard and expand your knowledge so you get better at it, to the point it becomes manageable.  Adapt and stay positive.  Find things in the day that make you happy: like bringing your food from home, exercising to lose weight, listening to your favourite music on the way to and from the hospital, and make time to meet up with your friends, even if it's a few minutes in the hallway.

Your stress management is important, not only for you, but for those you love.  Imagine one day you find someone who love telling you "What if things get worse and you're so stressed that we don't talk anymore?"

In your medical training, you're going to find yourself missing in that group photo because you're working, tagged in facebook photos of your baby or an event (because you weren't there and people want you to see the photo).

You'll miss out on people growing up, getting married, etc, and that'll surely play into your stress management.

As far as anger goes, it's the one emotion you're never supposed to show in the workplace.  There are times I have been talked to and mocked because I'm the medical student and lowest in rank, but I never said anything to retaliate.  And it actually has helped me, because some times it was just in jest but I thought it was actually meant to be spiteful and humiliating.

Anger doesn't make people like you more, and no one ever says "Oh you know that one really intense, mean person?  I really like that they're mean.  They're great."  Medical training is intense and demanding, and you don't need to stress other people out.

I'll write an entry on managing tough personalities and how to work with them, it'll be pretty long with some examples.

As other things, if you're angry: try to find a solution that will make you feel better.  Examples include: getting to the hospital earlier so you have more time to round, round faster and be more efficient, etc.  Get to the root of the problem and fix it by being proactive, talking to someone with the power to resolve that conflict, etc.

A lot of medical training is "here you go, deal with it," and you just have to endure it.  Anyway, I'll try to include more entries along the lines of this with examples.  I just want people to know they're not alone, and that the people around them are affected by their stress levels too.

keep working hard for your patients, and keep working hard to take care of yourself