You're advocating for patient rights with all your heart. How do you set emotional boundaries to stay strong?

To advocate for patient rights while maintaining emotional strength, be self-aware and know your limits. Seek support from mentors and peers. Balance work and personal life by engaging in hobbies and setting boundaries. Prioritize self-care with exercise, a healthy diet, and adequate sleep. Enhance communication and stress management skills. Set clear advocacy goals and delegate tasks. Reflect on experiences and consider counseling to manage emotions effectively.

Setting emotional boundaries is crucial for patient advocates. Here’s how to stay strong and emphasize self-care: Self-Awareness: Recognize your emotional triggers and limits. Scheduled Breaks: Take regular breaks to recharge and avoid burnout. Support Systems: Build a network of colleagues or mentors to share experiences and seek advice. Professional Help: Seek counseling or therapy if needed to manage stress and emotions. Self-Care Practices: To stay balanced and grounded, engage in self-care activities like exercise, mindfulness, meditation, and hobbies. These strategies help maintain emotional resilience while advocating passionately.

Be accountable in your role and be aware of your scope of practice while advocating for patients. Take into account the possible outcomes from similar past situations and acknowledge your role only as a facilitator in the advocacy process. Follow the process with integrity and compliance. Do not make any commitments to the patient. Communicate with the patient regarding the consequences of the appeal or a complaint review process, both favorable and unfavorable circumstances to set realistic expectations. Utilize organizational resources to use a guided professional approach for patient advocacy. Emphasize on self-care and wellness.

Some of the things I’ve found to be imperative to balancing one’s personal emotions, and perspectives while being an effective patient advocate, is to set clear boundaries and expectations. As an advocate of any sort, there is a need to set realistic expectations and be aware of your resources and tools. It is also important to become familiar the needs of your patients while keeping in mind any restrictions that may arise with available resources prior to relaying them to patients. Furthermore, inter-professional collaboration can be useful as a patient advocate, so seeking counsel or support is always helpful. Lastly, being respectful, concise and honest with patients will provide a foundation of trust and positivity.

Knowing your limits This is beyond just knowing you’re approaching burnout, or implementing self-care. This can be emotional limits. Are you feeling undervalued at work? Is your work environment a toxic one? If so, why is it? Can you help enact change? Why or why not? If we have the ability to change things for our patients for the better, we should. However, we should also know when to walk away from a bad situation. If it truly is that bad, what can you do while walking away to help initiate that change? The important thing to know is what can you honestly do and what can you not do? If you are finding yourself in these situations (which are common in healthcare and why I am focusing on this) know your boundaries and stick with them.

Self care truly can be simple. Be realistic with your goals for a self care routine, if you’re not likely to get up 30 minutes earlier to meditate or go to the gym, that’s okay! You’re listening to your body and giving yourself rest. Sometimes self care looks like getting your morning coffee while it’s still hot or turning up your favorite music on the commute. It’s in the way we take care of ourselves throughout each day and night, checking in with ourselves regularly and addressing our both our needs and desires.

Self care is vital to be a good patient advocate. Use your down time for something productive. Get your hands dirty in the garden, go for a walk in the forest, go meet a mate for coffee, and make this a regular thing. It becomes a day when you’re not thinking of work and can focus on other things, freeing up mental space to be the advocate you are effectively and efficiently while at work.

Taking care of one’s self is essential to being able to help others. This is why it can be helpful to implement self-care practices that ensure patient advocates are in the best mental and physical space to serve others. Advocating can be very taxing on both the mind and body. Taking the time to care for one’s self is crucial to replenishing energy and stepping up to tasks with your best foot forward. Taking a stroll, arts and crafts, salon or spa day, coffee in the morning, reading a book, meditation, going out for dinner, having a glass of wine after a long day of work, are just a few effective self-care practices. No matter what the self-care ritual encompasses, allocating time dedicated to one’s self is a key to avoiding burnout.

Schedule weekly activities that bring joy like reading, walking, painting. - Practice relaxation techniques (e.g., deep breathing, meditation, yoga) - Prioritize sleep and maintain a consistent sleep schedule

As a firm believer in inter-professional collaboration, I agree that sometimes a new lens is needed to grasp the full picture. Therefore, seeking guidance, counsel or support from others with similar goals or in similar roles can be beneficial to both patient and advocate. It can lead to new discoveries, increased resources and a new outlook on approaching difficult or unfamiliar cases. It’s always a good thing to get a second opinion or perspective, especially when advocating for patients. This kind of team effort is also effective in mitigating errors and risks due to having multiple reviews or perspectives on the matters at hand.

Talk to your colleagues. This can’t be understated or over exaggerated. This is a vital way of supporting you through the difficult times. The lay community might not get it and partners/friends may not either, but your colleagues are there, they know the system, they know the personalities you deal with. When you’re part of a great team there should be some element of team debriefing included into your working week to allow for some support to be vocalised about these difficult situations.

Even therapists need therapists! Calling on friends, family and colleagues for support some times just isn’t enough. They may be feeling drained themselves or simply just not understand. Don’t forget to make yourself a priority so that you can continue your life’s work and passions.

Do not make any commitments to the patient. Communicate with the patient regarding the consequences of any appeal or a complaint review process, both favorable and unfavorable circumstances to set realistic expectations. Utilize organizational resources to use a guided professional approach for patient advocacy.

One thing I have found to be helpful is verbalizing the boundaries that keep me within my scope and using closed-loop communications to ensure transparency and negate confusion. Within my current role, my assistance is limited to inpatients, but I strive to be as resourceful for my patients and their families while I am on their care team. Setting expectations and scheduling in advance family meetings, allows me to create a platform for their questions and concerns. This advocates for the patient and family to maintain control over the plan of care and to foster continued collaboration.

Take into account the possible outcomes from similar past situations and acknowledge your role only as a facilitator in the advocacy process. Applications from previous learning can be helpful in reflecting over the possible outcomes, patterns of the decisions that have been made and can further assist in your role as an advocate for the patient. Not only that, it also allows you to accept the challenges of patient advocacy process and creates acceptance for the implications of the final decision.

Schedule weekly reflection time (e.g., journaling, meditation).Evaluate your emotional state and adjust self-care rituals as needed. Always celebrate successes and acknowledge areas for growth.

Often professionals reflect on the ways we could improve as well as on our bigger moments of success. While those are certainly important, let’s not forget the smaller successes of each day. Preventing burnout in a high stress job is difficult but can be done by including in our reflection, the ways in which our presence made a difference.

Shadow your senior colleagues to see how they advocate on a daily basis. Find the good ones on your team and take things from their methods of advocacy to incorporate into your way of doing things. Also ask for feedback. This will help you learn what went well and what could’ve been better.

Keeping up to date resources is a must. I always try to find the county that I work in and surrounding counties public resources, and all the different low cost pharmacy plans around. I make a binder and update as needed and it makes it quick and easy to help!