A rewarding and lucrative career is an enticing goal for many people, but the reality is that in almost all fields, professionals face a wide range of obstacles and setbacks over the years. Being ready to accept this truth is half the battle. In an especially demanding and high-pressure field like healthcare, if you know what are the dangers that can slow down your career, you can minimize their impact by taking the right steps.
Here are a few things to keep in mind if you don’t want to be taken by surprise with your career progress as a health care professional.
Your Health Needs Utmost Attention
To be a good physician or nurse, you need to be in great physical and mental shape so you can keep your productivity levels up and stay focused. Whenever your health state is in decline, your performance suffers. The worst setback you can encounter in your career, from both a professional and financial point of view, is a severe illness that keeps you away from work.
Taking great care of your health is thus an investment in your career too. However, there are many things in life outside of our control, so you must account for unfortunate scenarios where you get sick without warning. With Ameritas disability insurance, for example, you are covered financially if you have an accident or illness that leaves you disabled and unable to continue with your work responsibilities.
Burnout Is a Real Possibility
The prevalence of burnout among nurses, physicians and physician assistants is huge. As a health professional, if you don’t actively pursue balance in your life, you’ll discover that it’s incredibly easy to get overwhelmed with work responsibilities to the point that your mental health gets affected.
A state of physical and mental exhaustion that occurs as a result of working in a stressful environment, burnout can ruin your relationship to work and put a real damper on your career by making each task seem many times more overwhelming and difficult. The solution is to strive to maintain balance in your life by taking time for rest and relaxation.
Interpersonal Skills Matter as Much as Work Ethic
Working in healthcare means working with people. On one hand, you have colleagues and managers who suffer from the same amount of stress and who can make life either easier or harder for you. On the other hand, you have patients who suffer from all kinds of illnesses and traumas and who are highly sensitive while interacting with a health professional.
To successfully navigate the medical field and avoid setbacks in your career, it’s important to master interpersonal skills. Good communication, empathy, negotiation and conflict management are the key ingredients that can help you grow your career. In the absence of these skills, you’ll encounter small or big setbacks and find that you’re getting more stress from your work that you should. Establishing a career in the medical field can be immensely rewarding at a personal and professional level, but the challenges are on par with the rewards. With the right mindset, you can prepare for these challenges in advance.
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