Vacation as Medicine
What if I told you there was a medicine that would improve your wellbeing, productivity, and creativity while decreasing your risks of heart disease, stroke, and chronic illnesses caused by stress? Would you take it?
Because that medicine exists. It’s called vacation. It’s not exactly free, but the money you spend on it is well worth it for your longevity in work and in life.
There are lots of professionals who don’t take their vacation time, forget to plan things, and then just go on working. Sometimes they feel like they’re not able to take a vacation because they’re needed too much. Others don’t really know what to do with their time, so they keep working. Still, others fear the mound of work awaiting them on return.
When I was in clinical practice full time, I needed a week off every other month just to stay sane, pleasant, and not hate my life. I discovered this because one summer I forgot to intentionally schedule vacation time. The call schedule was set with so many others’ vacations, so I just worked straight through from the end of May until September.
It did not work out well for me. I hated everyone, all the time, by the end of that summer. I was exhausted and world-weary.
Work with no pleasure had taken over my life. I was short with staff, patients, and colleagues.
After that experience, I prioritized setting up my time off. You could say I gave myself a prescription for it, taken as needed, to alleviate my symptoms of discontent.
By observing the time frame when I seemed to grow more impatient and grumpy, I settled chose the schedule of taking one week every two months as what was needed to keep me working at my best and also enjoying my life. The time you need may well be different.
It took self-observation and time to determine the right dosing schedule.
It seems I am not alone in needing this prescription. In an article from Harvard Business Review, a vacation is associated with not only better mental health, but also decreased stress, increased productivity, and creativity. Lin Manuel Miranda famously got the initial conceit for Hamilton while on vacation. (No pressure.)
Have you ever experienced the flashes of inspiration that occur while you’re showering? Ideas and words flow so fluently and freely that often it's hard to capture them completely afterward. The relaxation we experience in the shower is thought to allow this creativity and problem-solving. Vacation can give us a more prolonged period of relaxation. In other words, relaxation at a higher dose. Why would you deprive yourself and the people you work with of these benefits?
Improved mental health and increased productivity are not the only advantages of taking a vacation. A study by the World Health Organization in 2016 (https://www.bbc.com/news/business-57139434) “found that working 55 hours or more a week was associated with a 35% higher risk of stroke and a 17% higher risk of dying from heart disease, compared with a working week of 35 to 40 hours.” Another study showed a decrease in mortality from any cause in a cohort of middle-aged men followed for 9 years who took vacation versus those who didn’t. (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11020089/)
These are the real, measurable health risks associated with being a workaholic. And vacation is the treatment.
We get used to this way of working and being during training when we are less empowered. But once training is over, we can make different choices. We need to normalize that the amount of time one person can work a week without ill effects is not necessarily the same as another person, or stagnant over a person’s lifetime.
People often need different doses or dosing schedules of medicine to get the desired benefit.
It is ok, even desirable, to adjust your work hours over the course of your hopefully very long career, particularly as your life outside work changes.
I know physicians who forget to schedule their time off. They too end up overworking every summer or holiday season and become miserable and disgruntled by the end, while everyone else had their play and family time.
One physician I know takes plenty of vacation but often calls in or checks the EMR during his time off(sometimes from another continent). This too is associated with negative results. When you work on vacation, it cuts into the stress relief that you need to restore your sense of balance and wellbeing.
Not being “away” when you’re supposed to be can also create additional problems by giving conflicting information to staff. They then have to sort out whether to follow the covering partner’s plan or the vacationing doctor’s plan, resulting in more work for the staff and covering doctors and confusion for the patients who receive contradictory information. This is not ideal. For anybody.
When you’re away, be away. You deserve it. You need it (even if you don’t think you do). Fully enjoy your vacation time and recharge so that you can come back relaxed, refreshed, and ready to work.
Doctors are well known for being terrible patients, but this is one health treatment you don’t want to miss.