Rebellion21: The One Habit That Changed My Career via Rob Orman, MD

In this 20-minute presentation from Rebellion in EM 2021, Dr. Rob Orman, MD talks about the one habit that changed his career. Rob gives us a step-by-step walkthrough of short pre, during, and post shift gratitude practices to improve job satisfaction and effectively decompress after work.

Rob Orman, MD
St. Charles Medical Center ED
Bend, OR
Twitter: @emergencypdx

Objectives

1. Discuss use of gratitude before and after an emergency medicine shift to improve satisfaction during patient care and decompress after returning home.

Outline

1. Discuss stressors of typical emergency medicine shift and usual reflexive responses to them
2. Discuss pre shift gratitude – I am open to accepting gratitude from my patients
3. Discuss intra-shift gratitude with specific example of a patient encounter
4. Discuss post shift gratitude practice using mindfulness meditation, visualization, and heart rate variability data

One Habit That Changed Rob’s Life

• If all you do is embrace the negative, then that shifts your perspective and mood to a negative one
• The opposite is also true. If you embrace the positive, then that shifts your perspective and mood to a positive one
• In general, negatives tend to get amplified, and positives tend to get diminished
• Gratitude however is the one habit that can help give us a cognitive reframe
• Gratitude can help us not only be better/feel better but also a reset/recharge
• Pre-Game Gratitude:
  • There is not a lot of attention to the intention of our day
  • Start the shift by saying, “I am open to accepting gratitude from my patients”
    • Accepting gratitude from others can be uncomfortable
    • Why is accepting gratitude so hard for each of us? Imposter syndrome. I didn’t really do anything. I was just doing my job.  The answer is most likely different for each of us
    • Accepting gratitude is simple, free, and has no negative side effects
  • Post-Game Gratitude:
    • At the end of the day, take a moment and intentionally evoke a feeling of gratitude
      • Write it down
      • Meditation
      • 2 minutes of breathing exercise to remove stress of the day
      • End the day with a review the day to find moments of greatness (making the ordinary, extraordinary)
• BOTTOM LINE: Gratitude predicts life satisfaction, BUT life satisfaction does not predict gratitude (Suggests causation not association)

Post Peer Reviewed By: Salim R. Rezaie, MD (Twitter: @srrezaie)