108 | Dr. Emma Jones | The Phoenix Blueprint and burnout | Emerging Stronger from the Blaze of Healthcare | Core values | Questioning your thoughts | Circle of control vs circle of concern

Dr. Emma Jones is a hospice and palliative care physician, also worked as a pediatric oncologist and pediatrician. She’s been in the field for over 10 years and is active in helping healthcare professionals with burnout in the modern medical system. She is the author of The Phoenix Blueprint, Emerging Stronger from the Blaze of Healthcare

https://www.emmajonesmd.com

Sometimes you need to realize you may be part of someone else’s plan and get onto your own plan

Dr. Jones talks about the difficulties with working with pediatrics but also the amazing resiliency of kids and their parents

We are told that medicine is a calling and a privilege, and we should sacrifice everything in service of the patient – this is an unrealistic expectation 

We talk about burnout and moral injury

Burnout a helpful term because it’s something we can all feel and understand and use to seek help

Moral distress or injury is something that occurs regularly - when there is discordance between what you want to do and what you are able to do - whereas burnout is more at the end of a line of moral injuries

Burnout triad: emotional exhaustion, cynicism, lack of fulfillment

If we can get the frontline healthcare workers out of burnout and the day-to-day strife, we can help them be part of the solutions to the problems we face

Dr. Jones talks about the philosophy of yoga and how it can help us flourish

Sleep is vital to healing from burnout. It allows the brain to clean itself; you are smarter after getting adequate sleep

A lot of us are not even giving ourselves the opportunity to get enough sleep

Lack of sleep makes it difficult to put things in their proper context and map solutions

We talk about core values and the importance of knowing what yours are and how they correspond to your actions

Emma shows the actions she takes to correspond with her core values

Joy and humor are a huge part of our humanity 

Questioning your thoughts is key. All thoughts are lies. We recreate memories. Our memories are fallible and tend to degenerate the more we recall an event

Learn to let go of thoughts that do not serve you. Choose the ones that are helpful. You get to control them. You cannot believe every thought that comes into your head

Steven Covey describes 3 types of circles in our lives in The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. You have the circle of control you have direct control over but the circle of influence and circle of concern you have less control over. The point is to recognize what is worth focusing on and what is not worth your focus. For exampl