Human error is a leading cause of death in healthcare. Some studies show about 200 deaths in the US per day because of medical errors, though it is not clear how many of them are caused by good clinicians who make the wrong decision versus other types of medical errors. I wrote a book (Healthcare EQ) inventorying the ’emotional cost’ to the clinician of each patient interaction labeling ’emotional fatigue’ as a cause in performing sub-optimally. If you run every single red traffic light on your way to work, it could be deduced that you would show up to work a little more ’emotionally exhausted’ than if you hit all green traffic lights on the same route. Extending this example to patient interaction, if patients seen earlier in the day require more emotionally, it could also be deduced that patients in the afternoon might see a more fatigued clinician. We captured some of this first hand in the book. It led to a meme that asked,”What time did you leave work?” with the answer being “5PM is when I drove home but 2PM is when I emotionally quit.” I see this in athletes too. If an adverse event occurs at a point in the competition, it is hard for some athletes to recover and they ’emotionally quit’ before the game is over. Traditional workplace is no different.
At every place of work across the world, employees show up with a level of emotional temperature that is either positive or negative. As the workday progresses, depending on the interactions, similar to clinicians seeing patients, some interactions will be more emotionally expensive than others. In general, just like in healthcare, a level of emotional fatigue sets in mid to late afternoon especially if prior interactions were more intense. It is therefore, highly likely that we all sub-optimally perform later in the day and even later in the week. Scheduling important meetings or problem-solving type interactions where both intellectual and emotional intelligence are required, will likely lead to not the best solutions. Taking inventory of each call, meeting, interaction as the day progresses and ‘refueling’ is a key part of human performance. There has to be a ‘unit of measure’ for the interactions so they can accurately be ‘priced’ and then decisions about future interactions need to be made. One health system has adopted the concepts in the book and created a department-wide language and acceptance of emotional fatigue as a potential cause for medical errors. They prefer their clinicians go home if the first part of their day was too costly as the proper care and treatment of patients in the afternoon cannot be compromised.
This week, take inventory of your day from an emotional cost perspective. Assess how you do after an emotionally costly interaction versus how you do after a positive interaction. Think about an accumulation of costly events during a work day. How do you show up at home after a day like this? Think about what kind of breaks you can proactively insert and kind of scheduling changes you can make to make sure your best version shows up at key times that require your best.
Professional Development 