Identifying And Avoiding Burnout with Lucas Briggs, DPT

Burnout is an overwhelming form of exhaustion which can happen to anyone, especially those in the workforce. Lucas Briggs, DPT has, unfortunately, at a young professional age, already had to deal with the consequences of burnout. Stresses stemming from work, social environment, and home can all accumulate at any given time and show up in many different ways. As leaders, it is imperative that you take care of yourself because, without your leadership and vision, the company will falter. As the saying goes, the pace of the leader is the pace of the pack. We talk with Lucas about how to identify when you’re feeling burnout or overwhelm so you can manage it appropriately and handle it before it gets the best of you and those around you. Not only that, but it behooves you as a leader to recognize when your team members are experiencing burnout as well. What are you doing in your company to minimize stress, recognize patterns of stress, and give you and your team members outlets for rejuvenation? You’d be surprised how spending a little effort in this area will improve retention and cultivate the culture that you are looking for. Employees in this generation need to know that you care and are willing to promote their balanced lifestyles.

—

On this episode, I’m talking with Lucas Briggs, a physical therapist out of Grand Rapids, Michigan. I came across Lucas’ article in July 2019 in  Impact Magazine , where he wrote about identifying burnout. For someone relatively young in the profession, it’s interesting to me that he had some insight about burnout. I’m seeing the topic come up more in social media and also from general perception where you don’t see a lot of older physical therapists, they’ll run in hard. You might see an older dentist or older family practitioner or even a surgeon. You don’t see a lot of that in physical therapy. I’m sure it’s multi-factorial, but nonetheless, we don’t see it a lot. I also have come across younger physical therapy owners that complain about burnout.

I thought it would be a great opportunity to talk to him about his insight and what he does since he’s had to deal with it himself, what he does to manage burnout and stress, not only in his own career but also in the people that he works with. For someone who’s relatively young in the profession to recognize it and also be mindful of it as he’s working with others, I think is beyond his years. I thought it would be valuable for all of us to take a look a little bit about what might be causing our burnout and identify those factors and try to figure out what we can do to manage it so that we can maintain our energy, maintain our passion, maintain our vision and still focus on others and have the energy to do so. I think it’s invaluable for us individually, but also as a profession to recognize that this is happening. Let’s get to the interview.

—

I’ve got Lucas Briggs,  C linic  D irector and dad from  Grand Rapids , Michigan  He  did an article in  Impact M agazine  about burnout with physical therapists and I thought it was somewhat timely. I’m noticing some of those things  coming up from the Web PT report regarding the physical therapy profession . I n general ,  things that I’m noticing a bout the profession  and how   there seems to be a significant amount of people that do complain about burnout and the challenges with our profession. I  wanted to thank you, Lucas,  for coming on and joining me.  

It’s m y pleasure. Thanks for having me.  

Y ou did a n  article in  I mpact   M agazine about identifying burnout.  Y ou  had  a little bit of a burnout  experience  yourself,  but I’d like to learn a little bit more about you and if you could share with the audience about   your story, where you came from and where you’re at professionally.  

I did  my graduate school training in  Grand Rapids , Michigan  at   Grand Valley  State University . It’s  where I met with my wife. She’s here.  Her   family is  from here.  We took  a little adventure out to Washington where we had our two kids.  It was  at  that  time where  I both ha d the pleasure of working with  some wonderful people at  South Sound Physical   T herapy.  Kim Stamp  was  my boss at that time. She was so supportive . I was  managing being a new dad  and  a new clinic director at the time, figuring out what it meant to be responsible  as a dad and be  resp onsible for other people’s  performance at work . It  was  a big transition for me a lot at once.  

That’s a  lot of  responsibility. How  many years had you been practicing physical therapy before getting that clinic director position?  

I think a year and a half.   It had  only been a year at  my first job  b efore my boss went on  maternity leave .  I  got  thrust into it rather quickly. I was already doing some  clinic  directing and then decided to change  clinics  because  they’re going to have me move an hour away and I had  just  bought a house.  It  was  like, “I  should probably get something closer to home. ”  

Increased pulse rate, typical illness, and missed days of work are some physical symptoms of burnout.
Click To Tweet

You  we re  a  clinic  director  for some period of time. Tell me where you’ve been and where you’re at now.  

I was  a clinic director for a couple of years in Tacoma, Washington .   M y wife and I decided to move back to Michigan to be closer to family and that was a couple  of  years ago now.  Now ,  I’m in  Grand Rapids, Michigan,  directing  a  clinic here , the  Grand Rapids Performance C enter  with a wonderful group of people here  as  a  part of  a network of clinics her e.  

You’ve  been out of school for how long ?   How  long have you been practicing?  

Since 2013 .  

E ven  for several  years, you’ve experienced episodes where  you’re  really stressed out.  Would  you consider  it  burnout per se?  

Yeah, for sure.   It’s the f irst time in my life talking  to a medical professional and talking to my doctor about feel ing depressed  and going to a counselor for   a better part of  a  year  trying to  figure all that stuff out .   R ealizing through talking with my counselor that so much of it was not managing  the  change well and my time well.   That   was a big thing for me.   The f unny thing about it now  is  we do this  for people all the time where we’re like,  “G reat exposure.   Make  sure you get  to  rest.  We’re  going to incrementally do stuff with you. ”   I’m like, “Let  me take  in  all the things at once   and expect everything to be fine. ” It doesn’t work  that way.  

Early  on  in your career, especially as you took on the role of  the  clinic director, you add on top of that the stress of the fatherhood , d o  you remember any episodes in particular that you ca n share where you felt like, “ T his is too much for me ? ”  

I was plugging  it  wrong  by  pushing through it  and trying to manage  press ures from up top ,   “I  need to hit these and  the  clinic hasn’t been hitting those  numbers.” I’m  trying to figure out how to motivate people to change the way they practice  and a ll  that stuff. I didn’t notice that I was not okay  because  everything was trending  in  the right direction.  The one  day  that it hit  me  is  it was a reaction .  I’m not quick to anger  and  I walked in the office and it’s a long day of treatment  and  I was treating predominantly chronic pain. I still am . It’s a  passion of mine .   I walked in and  somebody told me there was a call on the line for me and I expected t hat I was ready to go home. W hen I heard there was a call, I screamed and threw my folders on the  ground.  I did it and looked around and everybody goes wide -eyed  staring at me .  I was like,  “What  is wrong with me?  What just happened?”  I have never done anything like that, even in sports. I was like,  “ I’m going to do something about this and whatever this is, I don’t know.”  

You had this unexpected emotional reaction that’s not typical for you and that was a red light to you that  was like , “M aybe I need to do something. ”  

I t’s not always an em otional reaction for everybody, but that  was my red light. I’ve had folks who  I’ve  worked with that it’s come out in physical symptoms. I thought it was interesting doing research on that  e ven something ,  if you pay attention, sometimes you can feel your own pulse. Somebody who couldn’t  stop feeling their pulse in their body , it  was their sign of burnout among others. I would have thought that something was happening in them  and  it ’ s autonomic nervous system dysregulation . I t was coming out in them and that was freaking them out. Reading more about burnout, I was like, “ W e ’ve  got to give this person a break.”  

When you say physical symptoms, you’ll see a  lot of people who will get sick   and  they are unable to put their finger on it  or  maybe they’re just down for a while . T hings like that  are  what you’re talki ng about with physical symptoms?  

Absolutely  and t he pulse is a rare manifestation, but more typically t he illness  and   missed days of work. Other stress symptoms that we’re used to dealing with at least folks who deal with chronic pain a lot were people are manifesting their stress physically  with  TMJ headaches, migraines  and  all that stuff . You  start to hear about  that  stuff and I’m like,  “You’ve  come to me with your headache a couple of times in the last couple of weeks. Maybe we should sit down and ta lk about your next vacation or what we need to do to change  your work schedule. ”  

That’s  great that at this young age as a supervisor, you  recognize  some of  those  issues that can come up from your employees. Was there anything at the time that your supervisors recognized in you ,  in which they provided some help or was this mostly internally – motivated?  

Kim  was really great. She was great about meeting with me and she would sit down one – on – one with lunch  and  I started to notice this stuff . I t was a little more difficult for her  because   we only saw each other  once every two weeks or once every month .  I felt like   there was  an open enough door that I could just talk with her about it . She was  willing to do whatever  and  like, “However  I can support you, just let me know. ” She  was great about that.  In her office ,  when she  recognizes  folks, she would actually set them up with a massage  with our massage therapist ,   which I thought was a cool thing.  

Now that you’re in that position, having gone through it yourself ,  what are some of the things that you’re doing on a   day – to – day  or  week – to – week basis ? Do  you have your antenna up? Are you meeting regularly ?   W hat are you doing to support  your employees or team members  regarding stress and  anxiety?  

The  biggest thing I would say is building a culture where we look out for each other. I fe el like it’s a  cliché  response . I t’s important I feel for everybody to be on the same page.  W e’ve done that here where   we get together . We build  some social capital   whether it  would  be  drinking  or  everybody’s got the same lunchtime so we  can enjoy each other at lunch.   If  I see something, I recognize it in my team and they do the same thing for me.  We  have built a cu lture where it’s okay and  it’s reasonable  to go. If  they see  me  stressed out , they’ll  call me on it and  I’m going to  be like,  “ D o you want me to help you out?  Do you want to do  some treatment? ”   They’ll  do whatever modality . W e  have a few folks who do dry needling . It’s almost  like a guided meditation session or if I’ve got a headache or they’ve got a headache, we’ll d o some cervical manipulation or  muscle energy stuff, whatever it may be to try and help each other out.   I feel like that’s been helpful . Y ou’ve got to balance . Y ou get open time on the schedule.  That  ex pectation is that  you’re  marketing and we  are  following  up  on all that.  We  do that, but w e’ve tried  to nail home the value that this is about people first.  E ven if  there are  marketing contacts that we’ve made and schedules to be filled ,  we value  the people in this clinic enough to take 30 minutes out  to  help each other out that way.  

You said you work a lot with chronic pain patients and so a lot of stress can come from the accu mu lation of emotional investment with these people.  What  are some of the other stressor s that you’ve noticed or found because s ometimes it could be productivity expectations, sometimes it could be a lack of cultura l alignment or value alignment? A re you noticing some of those things as well or other things?  

Yeah.  In  different positions that I’ve held, I have definitely felt some of that   cultural alignment or seen it in other  people  where they  do not feel  like they’re aligned with the culture.  They’re  getting burned out from that  and  that’s a little bit of a tricky beast to be  like, “How  do we encourage people to come here who se values align with our values?”   Some of  the other things, t hose productivity expectations  can definitely do it . People  who  are  receiving feedback ,  onset p roductivity  exp ectations can be big for people .  I’ve worked with a couple  of  people who h ave been fired before and that  when they see a meeting on their schedule,  I make sure that  I’m like,  “ Y ou’re not in trouble. E verything’s pretty cool. ”  

Maybe we  should put   the purpose of the meeting beforehand.  

T hat  can be a big one.  It  seems like with reimbursement going down if costs aren’t well – controlled, the expectations keep going up and up to productivity.  

I  know you’ve looked at a few studies, at least you did for the  Impact M a gazine both this time.  You  mentioned to me that you did a similar article a few years ago  on  the  Impact M agazine .   Did  they make any correlations between those factors like stresses of family versus the stresses of productivity versus lack o f value  alignment  or some of those other things?  

Those things  are studied. The one  I thought was interesting ,  paperwork was a huge one.  It  was the  volume  of paperwork . T hat is the one that gets me the most when I’m not consistent about that, especially when I’m just wanting to invest in my patients  and not  sp ending any time in front of  screen . T hen you  lose the ability to invest in your patients because  you are  spending too much time doing notes at home .   That’s  something  that I have tried to do a better job of getting notes done as I’m seeing patients  because it’s  made  a huge difference   and  my ability to feel  that  I can emotionally invest in people.  

I don’t think you’re alone.  I’ve read a couple of these  S tate of  Rehab Therapy Reports  that  Web PT  ha s put out .   R ather consistently over the years, the biggest compl aint amongst physical therapist  or therapists in th e healthcare professions is documentation . T he time that it takes  the amount of effort you have to put in to cover your but t and cover  the services that you provide, it’s a huge stressor.  What do you do to  make sure th at you’re not taking notes home , t hat you’re getting them done during the course of the day? What are some of the things that you do?  

It depends  on the patient, but I’m trying and doing a better job than I did .  I’m still early in my ca reer, but earlier in my career,  I wouldn’t even take the computer in the room or maybe I’d just do the subjective when I was with the patient .   N ow ,  I’m doing the subjective and I’ve got templates for the long list of exercises that I typically do  like  choosing which one of those exercises I typically do.  While they’re doing something,  I’ll fill in that portion and then begin the assessment  so at least I can finish  the  note as opposed to feeling   like  I’m writing a full  note.  Then i t’s not  as burdensome to  have a little  tidy up  at the end of the day   as oppose d  to whatever it is.  

Productivity expectations can help align values.
Click To Tweet

One  thing that we stress to our therapists  in  our clinics  was  we always encourage them to do their manual treatments first as much as possible and get that out of the way.  The  people that did and for some people it was hard, but when they got their manuals out of the way , it  made it a lot easier for the flow of their patients and it also improve d  their doc um entation time so that they were leaving the clinics at the same time  the  patients we re leaving their appointments. That ‘s one thing that helped our clinics .   What  are some of  your triggers that you noticed, “ I’m getting a little stressed out ? ”  What  are some things that you noticed in yourself or that maybe some of the other studies that have shown that ,   “ I need to c heck up on myself a little bit ? ”   B ecause  you seem like a pretty calm,  easygoing guy and you had your  one outburst .  What are some of the things  you  notice d  now as you check in on yourself to say,  “ I need to do a little reflection ? ”  

It goes  along with the spiel that I give a lot of my folks dealing with chronic pain is that all these things are  going to  manifest themselves either cognitively, emotionally or physically . Your  stressors in and stressors  out are hovering  and  come out that way.  People  have their own weak   link  and  mine  is consistent  with that. One emotional helper  is  I get a little bit more emotional ,   which feels weird to me  because my wife calls me a robot. When I’m  a little more stressed out, I start to notice that everybody becomes a little bit more irritating . I notice everybody  else seems to be asking more of me  now . I’m like, “Here’s  what’s happening. ”  I didn’t take my time for myself this last week. I’m starting to build on me a little bit .  I’ve got colleagues  that  show their symptoms physically and then I’ve got colleagues that show their symptoms   through their cognitions as well.  They’ll  say ,   “My  mind starts racing . ”  

What  do you do then when you see those buildings come up in yourself and then after you tell me a little bit about what you do for  yourself?  What do you do for your employees when you start seeing that in them?   What do you do for yourself  first?  

I  do meditation.  I either do a guided meditation or just put on relaxing music .  I find that to be helpful for my emotional reactivity .  There are l ots of good examples of that. The  benefits are there and if you pay attention while you do it, you c an start to notice things like  I don’t want to fight everybody when I’m playing  soccer  or  whatever it is. That  works well for me. If I see physical symptoms coming out in any of my colleagues  and  my teammates, I’ll try and help them physically  at  the moment so they can  calm down in that moment as well as   encourage them to do the thing  that I know  helps their so ul .  The  one guy is like, if he fishe s every week, he’s cool.  I’m like,  “ W hen  wa s the  last time you’ve been fishing?  When are  you going to do that next? ” The gentleman  who gets in his head ,  y ou’ll notice he’s in his room more when it’s lunchtime instead of hanging out and joking around.   The  door ’ s half-closed and the room’s dark . T hat’s when we know he’s in his cave . W e would go and try a nd take him out of his cave and it works well for him   the  dry needling does . W e  use  homeostatic points from integrative dry needling whe re it’s basically like mapping  big areas on your  homunculus  like your body map , so  hands, feet and face.  It  helps  him  calm down  to  get  him  into his body and out of his mind.  

It’s  great that you’re in touch with your team members  and  that you’re wil ling to provide those services.  I think that’s great that Kim was willing to provide massage therapy services for  her  employees as well.  D oing that  goes a long way in showing that you care ,  that you’re empathetic. Do you see a correlation then between the fact that you do those things or when you do those things and an improvement in the feeling ,  the environment or productivity or   achievement of goals for the clinic and stuff like that?  

Yeah  and  the types of goals you  said  are  important as well.  What ones you  are  going to see and  how you go after those. I find that it’s helped so much with loyalty is that my team responds so well to me  b ecause they know that I care . T hey care about me and I care about them  and i t  goes such a long way when we have a difficult conversation to have that they know that I’m not coming at them from a sheer  numbers  perspective  because  I’ve shown them that I care about them as a person as well.  The n the y’re  more willing to make the changes .   T hat can  be seen  to physical therapists  who  all got into school to help people , “ We need  to make this billing change  be cause you’re not billing for  what  you’re treating for and  it’s  going  not to  help us achieve our financial goals if you keep do ing that. ”   T hey’re more responsive once they’ve felt the love.  

Y ou ’ve  mentioned in your article that  some of the things that contribute to burnout  are  inappropriate  work – life balance,  poor self-care , inadequate resources to meet  job expectations, perfectionism  and good old training error. Tell me a little bit abou t the training error.  T hat  stood out to me. Did  you feel like that was training error on for you or traini ng  error  for the people that you’re  supervising  or a little bit of both?  

Y ou  can  take that a couple of different ways, but I thought  that’s something that we know about in PT .   I certainly didn’t apply it to myself where I’m thinking,  “ I’ve got to train my load capacity for how much   responsibility I can take on at once. ”  I didn’t do a good job of that and that burned me  as well as new grads  burnout so quick because they’ve nev er had 40 hours a week of like, “T hese patients are my responsibility. ”   If  you’ re going to do an increase in  load, you need an increase in recovery time as well  and t hat’s  not typically how that goes .  I t would be so much better if we built our new grads up, but then they’re so anxious to pay off their loans that they’re like,  “Give  me overtime. ”  Y ou’re  like,  “ I’ve seen some signs, maybe we shouldn’t . ”  I feel like increasing responsibility too fast can definitely be a thing.  

Meditation in general has been shown to do so much for productivity as well as burnout.
Click To Tweet

I see that as an owner .  I’ve  been an owner for about five years and people would ask me , “H ow  are  things going ?”   I  had the same thing i n my head all the time. I said ,   “ I love treating the patients. I’m having a great time. ”  I can’t stand all the HR issues that I’ve got to deal with. If someone could just take that off my plate, then I would be so happy just treating patients.  That’s  where a lot of owners have an issue.  Maybe  you’ve seen this as well  with  clinic directors. Maybe it’s not the other  PTs , m aybe it’s not you  but  having to deal with the front desk that hasn’t been performing properly or definitely hasn’t been trained properly or if you have aid e s that are the same way or aren’t willing to help when you ask them to help . They  don’t know what the doing and ignoring patients and stuff like that, that can lead so much to the headache of my day instead of  the  patients actually .  

I t  was the other way that you could talk about training  error .   Paul Gough  comes  around  and does  talks and all that . H e closes down his clinic every Wednesday  for three hours to do training,  which is great.  Also,  who does  that? Nobody  does that.  He  always respond s to that  question ,   “H ow can you afford not to ? I don’t do that, maybe I should. ”  Spending  that extra time with the front desk and training or your aid e  on  training goes such a long  way . E ven having a longer  training period for the PT that you just  hired because  when I don’t do a good job and that type of training is not my strong suit,  because   the  organization is not my strong suit .   How  many times I  get asked questions about where  stuff is or where the next thing is  and t hey would be like, “I f I would  ha ve done a better job with this training, I wouldn’t be getting  p e st e red  in between patients about   where  or how to do this or that. ”  

I think we minimize d  the importance of it simply because I know for me, in my experience and I’ve seen other owners, we hire w ho we can get off of  C raigslist.   We have them  s it with somebody else for a day,  maybe t w o and say,  “Y ou ’ve  got it. Good luck. ”   The  people who are successful  at it,  the owners that I’ve interviewed are people that spend months .  They’re  not sitting next to somebody shoulder to shoulder for months at a time, but  they  have a plan ned  training program that you’re not fully trained  until you go through this program and our progra m takes six weeks, eight weeks  and   that stuff.  Those  are the people that tend to do really well and they’re trained on successful actions and they’re actually quizzed on some of the things that they’re trained  on .  

Considering  doing that not only your front office staff, your aid es  but also for your new grads  and  even consider if you’re bringing someone up .   You say, “I f you moved up ,  Lucas ,  and  you were responsible for the next clinic director there ,   w hat’s the training for the next clinical director?  How  did you vet them? How did you train them to be a clinic director? ”   W e usually take the most productive person and put them in that po st and expect them to continue.  

It doesn’t work  out that well all the time if you do that.  

A  lot of that training  can be immensely valuable  and as   I said, I think we minimize it a little bit. Do you feel like that’s led to some of whether it’s yours or other people’s   fatigue, stress  or  anxiety?  

Yeah, definitely. I’m  learning from my mistakes  and that  I am spending more time on training than I did   as   a  fresh clinic director . I n the first job,  they’re like ,  “We’re   going to  give you some help for three days so that they can do the ir training and then go for it , ”  and t hat was it . I didn’t think about anything else. I was trying to catch the front desk in between patients and  that’s  not effective .   I’ve been much more intentional about scheduling meetings ,  training meetings to go on and have the list of things that we need to continue to work on and then slowly tapering those over the course of  the  year.   That’s  definitely a thing  and  I hear that a lot  when   we go through training is that  a PT  or aid e  or a front desk person will be like,  “Are  you kidding me?  Are you  giving me tw o weeks of this ? The  last job I had , t hey just did one day .” I t’s like,  “ I t is a lot smoother.”  

I think that goes a long way in  showing  that you care. You want to set this person  up to succeed.  You  don’t want to throw them in the pool and say , “G ood luck . Try  to swim . ”  I  think it’s a big culture builder too ,   “ This is how  we do things ,”  and  t hey  can recognize what  the  culture is rather quickly and fall in line with the culture or  recognize that  it’s not a culture that  they  want to be a part of.  That comes with training and then follow  up and accountability and then retraining and all that good stuff . It  helps out to minimize the stress on the supervisors and the team in general.   Thanks for  your insight. Anything else you want to add to whether you brought it up in the article or in the studies that you ’re in  and whatnot?  

You led  me in the right direction  so  I feel like we covered  just about everything there  a t least as far as I know .   W e  briefly mentioned how  much research or  meditation and  that’s  something that  we’ve done a fair amount here like challenges .   K eeping it   fun  about  the  person who hits the least amount of days for meditation this month has to buy everybody lunch or something like that.  That  stuff has been helpful  be cause  a lot of us are  W eekend   W arriors and what have you.  M aking it into games has been  nice, mindfulness  like  the  MBSR ,  Mi ndful ness -Based Stress R eduction and  just meditation in general . It  has been show ing  to do so much   for productivity as well as burnout . It’s   a  worthwhile investmen t.  

Is there  an assessment for something to measure someone’s level of anxiety or stress?  

Yeah, there’s a ton of  them.   I can’t remember the acronyms.  

The  Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction  course has some free meditations and course guides.   

I t’s  the  four D SQ .  

It’s the  Four-Dimensional S ymptom  Q uestionnaire.  

Some PTs lose the ability to invest in their patients because they are spending too much time with paperwork.
Click To Tweet

T he four D SQ  I feel like it’s more utiliz ed in Europe. I don’t have any  basis for that .   W hen I went through depression questionnaires with my doctor,  that’s not the one  I’m using here . It  goes through the physical symptoms as well, which I thought was useful  because  I did have a teammate  who  well- masked everything else except the physical symptoms . That was  useful  be cause  it  was easy to talk about the physical symptoms and it’s like,  “I must be sick.   What’s  happening with me ?  I must be really  sick , ”  but the doctors can’t find anything  and then  I  get  to  read these.  I’m like,  “Y ou’re listing everything on this   F our  DSQ for physical symptoms.”  

W ould you recommend a supervisor maybe at least do it for themselves and  they  get other people ?  That’s what it sounds like for you .   If you didn’t do it for yourself, you wouldn’t  notice  it  in other people .  

I would personally feel weird being like,  “ H ere’s an anxiety quest ion naire   for you ,  employ ee .”  Just  be cause I’m a physical therapist, not a physician  but taking the test myself so I could recogni ze the symptoms  were  useful  for me in that way.  

There was another one mentioned, the  Maslach Burnout Inventory . Do you know anything about that?  

Yeah,  that ‘s a classic burnout inventory. It’s useful . I didn’t find  it  to be as thorough .  I t’s more like  anxiety and  depression.  It’s  not specific to burnout.  You could  use the burnout questionnaire because it’s work – specific  and y ou  could give that to  your employees, but the  F our DSQ   would be more like for your knowledge.  

I’m reading your article. You said you personally recommended tak ing something like the  Burnout Test  at  15Minutes4Me .com .  

It  takes th is   F our DSQ, the y  clinical ize it and put it into  a  cute little internet questionnaire for your  M illennial s .  It  covers the physical symptoms as well  as  the cognitive-emotional symptoms  that  the  Mas l a ch  covers .  

The  website was  15Minutes4Me .com .  I’m sure  there are other helpful tips  there.  

There  are  a lot of built- in resources on that website as well .   I t’s  amazing what you can fi nd out there for mental health.  I think it’ s valuable to note that  we work  as  a lot of professions are, but we have some extra taxing parts of our profession in terms of  dealing with other people’s s tuff that they bring in the door .  I think it’s valuable to take  the time,  especially as  an  owner  or supervisor  to invest in the mental health of your team.  

Thanks for  taking the time to talk with us about it.  

It’s  absolutely my pleasure . T hanks for having me on and I  look forward to  reading  more of your stuff.  

I f people wanted to reach out to you specifically, how would they do that?  

You can shoot   me  an email . That will be great.  I usually take a couple of days to respond  because  I don’t keep my phone on me all the time.  I  check  intermittently .  My email is  LucasVBriggs@Gmail.com .  You  c an definitely reach o ut to me if you have any questions.  

T hanks for your time ,  Lucas. I appreciate it. I think this is invaluable stuff, especially for those people who are burning the candle at both hands and have a lot of stresses on them. It’s important that they set aside time for themselves.   T hanks for your time and take it easy.  

Thanks .  

Furthermore, it behooves you as a leader to recognize when your team members are experiencing burnout as well. What are you doing in your company to minimize stress, recognize patterns of stress, and giving you and your team members outlets for rejuvenation? Spending a little effort in this area WILL IMPROVE RETENTION AND CULTIVATE THE CULTURE THAT YOU ARE LOOKING FOR. Employees in this generation need to know that you care and are willing to promote their balanced lifestyles.

Love the show?  Subscribe, rate, review, and share!

Join the Physical Therapy Owners Club today:

The post Identifying And Avoiding Burnout with Lucas Briggs, DPT appeared first on Physical Therapy Owners Club.