Evolving Workforce Dynamics: Navigating Burnout and Barriers in Health Care – interview with Dr Julie Bajic Smith – The Entrepreneurial Clinician Podcast

Burnout doesn’t just happen to busy practice owners. It can happen to our staff too. So how do safe (and unsafe) systems of work impact on the risk of burnout for our workforce? Dr Julie Bajic Smith returns to the podcast this week to explore this question with Jo.

In this episode, Jo and Julie discuss:

• The implications of having a burnout workforce and the impact it can have on the quality of care delivered by staff
• Julie’s experience with burnout and realising that she didn’t want to manage people
• The importance of giving yourself permission to do things differently
• How Julie’s mission and passion have shaped her service delivery
• The importance of safe systems of work to protect staff from burnout
• What ‘emotional contagion’ is
• The impact emotional contagion can have (good or bad) on the culture in an workplace and on service delivery to clients
• How to separate positive and negative emotions in the workplace
• The importance of understanding what helps you switch off from work and better balance work and life, and 
• Examples of workplaces that are managing the burnout risk well.

About Julie: Dr. Julie Bajic Smith is a registered psychologist who has over 15 years clinical experience in aged care. Julie is a board-approved psychology supervisor and she regularly delivers clinical supervision to intern psychologists and other mental health professionals. Julie is also an experienced researcher and writer. Her doctorate research examined wellbeing in home care workers and postdoctoral research focused on supported decision-making in dementia. She has significant experience in the assessment and the application of psychological treatments to older adults and recently published a book on enhancing emotional wellbeing in residential aged care environments.

You can connect with Julie via her website at wisecare.com.au.

Thanks to our podcast sponsor, Practice Conquest!

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• Future Proofing Health Professional Facebook group 

 If you know you need more support, please visit my website at https://jomuirhead.com

Finally, if you loved this episode, please make sure you subscribe and leave us a review.

Transcript

Jo:

Welcome back to the Entrepreneurial Clinician Podcast. Before we get started with today’s episode, I would like to acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which I find myself recording on today. I will pay my respects to their eldest past, present, and emerging. And I just wanna say a really big thank you to these people who have looked after this land that I get to call home. Julie Bija Smith. Welcome back to the podcast. Thank you so much for saying yes, <laugh>.

Julie:

Thank you Jo for having me.

Jo:

It is a delight. Now, for those of you who are not familiar with Julie, she has been on this podcast before. And when I knew that I wanted to create this season all around burnout and self-care and looking after health professionals, I knew I wanted to talk to Julie. So Julie’s a little different in the way she has used her transferrable skills of being a health professional. And one of the things that she is extremely good at is identifying and seeing where problems are arising in our aged care facilities, aged care services, anything to do with looking after our elders in our community. But Julie, I’d like you to explain to people who may not have ever heard of you before, who are you? And really what do you do?

Julie:

Thanks, Jo. And I hope this question’s not gonna be the whole episode talk because I’ve done lots of different things. I’m a registered psychologist and I have accidentally stepped into the aged care scope about 15 years ago. And I haven’t left since. My role has changed over the years. When I first started out, there weren’t many psychologists working in aged care, and I started by supporting the elderly. And more recently I focused on the wellbeing in the workers. So that’s my focus at the moment. I still have very strong passion for the elderly and I feel a strong connection and I understand their needs and the challenges that they experience as they’re getting older, not all of them, but some of them. And the supports available, both for people living in their own homes and those in residential care settings.

Jo:

Yeah. It’s such a unique service provision that you are offering. And I love the way you have transitioned probably in the last 12 months, maybe a little bit longer away from the direct care of the individuals who are needing services and training up and working with the staff and the consultants and all the myriad of people that are coming into our aged care facilities. It was quite a significant change for you. Can we talk about that a little bit? How did you go, this is what needs to be done?

Julie:

Look, I think that aged care industry has been evolving a lot and there’s so many things or factors that have contributed towards all these changes. We’ve got government changes here in Australia. We have changes in the aging population dynamics, demographics have changed. You know, we’ve had the inquest into age care. So a lot of things have happened and there’s a lot of media negative stories that have come out post Covid as well around how outbreaks have been handled around human rights versus protection and safety. And, I think that it’s brought to light that there’s so many areas that we can explore within this context, but I feel that one that we have perhaps overlooked in many ways has been the impact of all of this on the workforce.

Jo:

I’m so glad you brought that up ’cause I’m sitting there going, now remember, you’ve gotta put the context here. So if you think that this is an episode not for you, because you don’t wanna work in aged care, you don’t work in aged care, I would really like to challenge your thinking around that because we are using aged care today as a way to talk about workplace dynamics, about burnout in workplaces. So if you work in a workplace, if you manage people in a workplace, if you own a business that supports people in a workplace, then you need to be listening to this episode because Julie is going to help us understand the implications of a burnt out workforce on providing quality of care. Now, we all know that the answers are gonna be in, don’t let your staff get burnt out. That sounds very simplistic. So we’re gonna sort of unpack this a little bit for everybody today. But before we get into that, into Julie’s expertise, Julie, would you mind sharing with us a time that you experienced burnout? Could you give us some context there?

Julie:

Oh, absolutely. I think that being a high achiever like yourself, Jo I think that we tend to be more prone to it. And we tend to females in particular take on board a a lot of challenges and a lot of commitments. And I think there were a few times in my life when I felt completely burnt out. I must say, like recently things have been better and I’ve been a bit stronger in saying no to things. But I certainly do remember when I felt like there was just too much going on. And I think that even when I started in aged care, when I started having lots of referrals to go and visit lots of nursing homes or lots of people in their own homes, I certainly experienced burnout ’cause here I am doing what I love, creating a job and a company that was exactly what I envisaged it to be. And suddenly it was like, oh my God, this is actually so hard. And I couldn’t actually picture that. It could be as hard as it was at that point of time.

Jo:

Wow. What an amazing realization that we all try and escape employment. I think many of us in our own private practices, ’cause it didn’t offer offer us freedom. It didn’t offer us the true amount of flexibility, but then we build something and we create a job in our ideal serving the clients that we love, but then we still feel really trapped.

Julie:

Absolutely. Absolutely. And it was interesting because it was like say no to things you don’t wanna do. Say yes to things you wanna do, but you can still experience burnout because it could be quite overwhelming. And, again, so much we can unpack. It’s like, what can we delegate? What do we have to do ourselves? What do you say when all the clients just want you, they don’t want to have other people. And, I remember quite clearly this day where I was like so exhausted. I worked so hard all day long. And then I most of my wages were going towards covering wages of people who were working for me. And I was like, I worked all day. But I can’t afford to pay myself. And this is not what I thought it would be. Like I was tired, I was burnt out, I was poor. I was emotional. And, I think that that was a big wake up call to change something. And what I want your listeners to also know that we often don’t just get to that stage. Often we do have warning signs that we ignore. And I think when it comes to burnout, this is a time where your body’s telling you something. You your gut feeling is telling you something. Why are you not listening to it?

Jo:

Oh, that’s a very uncomfortable truth for me right now, Julie <laugh>, as I am plugging away at learning how to listen to my body again. And I think that’s such an important point, because as health professionals, we’re all taught to have the health professional face where we don’t show our reactions when we are with a client. And I think for me, I saw so many clients in a day over so many days in a week, over months, over years. I mean, I’m into almost my 30th year of this type of work now. And I taught myself how to dissociate from feeling my bodily sensations. But like you say, there are warning signs along the way, but then sometimes our methodology or the disciplines, like, I don’t want this counter transference thing to turn up with my clients, so I’m gonna sit there and be this stoic rehab counsellor, or in your case, the stoic psychologist, and not show them that that horrible story has affected me.

Julie:

Yeah. Yeah.

Jo:

And then what I learnt was that over time, I could just keep all of that inside of me and stop connecting to it at all. That’s very unhealthy in case you’re wondering.

Julie:

And then it just takes you even longer then to get back and make that recovery, because the more you ignore these symptoms, the harder it then becomes because you stop believing in yourself. And I think it’s so important that we listen to ourselves, our gut feelings and to follow through with what change we want. And so the big point for me was, I don’t want to run my business this way. I don’t want to do it this way. This is not okay. And for me, that was a turning point. And yes it meant that I had to completely restructure what I was doing and the service I was delivering and saying no to clients. And, changing obviously the entire business model in terms of I don’t want more people working for me.

Success is not always about more clients, more employees, higher revenue. That was not the the carrot being dangled. I think for me, it was just about reevaluating what my mission was, and it was to help more older people. And the way that I wanted to do it was to then look at how I can help the workforce. Because if we have happy workforce, they’re gonna be delivering the happy service to their clients. And also for me personally, if I feel happier within myself, I’m gonna do a better job. And, deliver better service myself if I’m tired, worn out, that’s not really helping anyone.

Jo:

And if we get resentful because we’ve worked all day to pay someone else’s wages, I mean, there was a time in my business where I was drawing down on the mortgage of my home to pay wages. That was a wake-up call for me as well. So money always comes into these conversations. But I really appreciate your share there because you thought that you had to build this multi-clinician practice ’cause that was the model that was being shown. Right? But you had this eye-opening experience one day where you kind of went, I don’t wanna manage people. This work is hard enough. I want to practice or give my influence out in a different way.

Julie:

And it’s okay. And I have permission to do that.

Jo:

You do. Everybody, anyone listening today has permission to do that.

Julie:

Has permission to change your business. It’s a very simple quote and motto that comes to my mind so often, but it’s like, it’s your business, your rules. And you decide how you want to run your business. I often think about Luna Park and entry to Luna Park, it’s like, you pay one fee and then you have whatever adventure you want to do. Andwhen you think about your business, like what model do you wanna use? Do you want to have like one-on-one service? Do you want to have one fee for all your workshops, or you can really evaluate and make your own rule? No one’s gonna say you can do it that way. And particularly when you have in today’s world, there’s so many different business models, different services, and I think that as health professionals, we often feel scared that there’ll be implications from governing registration bodies or from, I don’t know, like imaginary that will really stuff up what we do and what, but that’s not always the case. I think that the fear, it’s another big topic that we’re obviously not talking about today, but I think it holds back a lot of people and they feel I can’t do things differently.

Jo:

Yes. So permission to do things differently, or permission to have the thoughts and explore the possibility of doing things differently. So just to reframe, no, to summarize this a little bit, Julie, you’ve gone from being a registered psychologist who had her own practice with other clinicians in it, and you’ve gone, no, thanks. That’s not working for me. I am now going to become the sole principal, but I am going to deliver services still to the same clients, but through the workforce that’s already set up.

Julie:

Absolutely.

Jo:

Nice.

Julie:

And I am working less, I am happier and I’m making more money.

Jo:

Nice. <laugh>. Yeah, we could probably just hit end there and everyone’s going, I want what Julie has.

Julie:

It was hard to come to that realisation, but I think that that’s just because this is not something you learn at uni like, unless you do a business degree, but then it’s like, what service do you provide? So as health professionals, we are not taught about marketing, about budgeting around all this stuff that like the wisdom that I’ve had to learn from you Jo, over the years as well in many, many times you’ve seen me at my lows. And I think that this is something that it’s like, you don’t know what you don’t know, and you don’t know that there’s a different way that you can do things. And, I know that many of your listeners have had to learn things the hard way. And I’m not saying that owning a private practice should not be a goal for a lot of people. It is. And they’re happy, they have a right way of how to do it. But for me, my burning desire was to improve the age care industry. And I didn’t know when I started, but I came to the realisation that when it came to burnout, when it came to what was happening within the workforce, I could not solve that by providing individual services.

Jo:

Nice. Look at that. Did you see the way she did that? Everybody, Julie just tied in her mission and her passion to her model of work like that, that is a gem in itself. 

Julie:

That’s what you get lots of mentoring with Jo <laugh>.

Jo:

Oh, you’re a sweetheart. Thank you. Oh, unsolicited. That was cool. Okay, so let’s now talk about workplaces and safe systems of work. Because essentially that is what you’ve now identified in the aged care sector here in Australia, is that we don’t necessarily have safe systems of work for the employees. What are some of the things that you are noticing about people who go to work caring for people in workplaces?

Julie:

Oh, look, there’s so much. I don’t know if you know, but this week is Women’s Health Week.

Jo:

Okay. I didn’t know, I feel like I should have known <laugh>

Julie:

Jean Hailes Foundation promotes Women’s Health Week. And one of the things that we talk about is burnout. And it’s really important to know that because women and girls handle more than three-quarters of the unpaid care work in the world. And it’s not just for women who are married or those who have kids, but a lot of people enter age care because of their personal experience of looking after their loved one. And 85% of workers in aged care are females. And so what I’ve noticed is that a lot of people who come into aged care have a lot of things going on in their personal lives as well. A lot of them have caring duties and responsibilities. Unfortunately, we are not getting many young workers because aged care workers don’t earn great money. And for them to put their kids into daycare, it’s quite expensive. And so many look for other jobs that are high paying or that can facilitate school hours so that they can actually make the money in other ways. But what I’ve noticed in aged care is that both in-home care when I was doing my PhD and doing interviews with home care workers, is that a lot of people use interactions with elders to help them overcome their own personal challenges. So they might not necessarily make an appointment to go and speak with a mental health clinician, but they will go and provide home care service and talk about their marriage issues or their issue parenting issues or whatever else might be going on for them with their elderly clients.

And so what we have is these projections of emotions, which is called emotional contagion, in that we can quite easily pass on our own emotions to others, but also they can pass it on to us. Now, Jo, it’s all well and good if we are in a good mood and we come to work and we are happy and we cheer up an unhappy elder. But the problem is that if we come in a particularly cranky mood and the client is quite happy to see us, and then we talk about all our problems, feeling crap, and then the client is also feeling bad. And so what might happen then is that we get to stage where clients are not wanting to see some workers who have negative emotions. And also in reverse, if clients are not really feeling great themselves in that, workers are going, I don’t wanna go and see that person because that’s affecting our mood. I think that people are becoming more aware of the importance of preserving our own emotions. And so what I’ve noticed is that aged care workers are not having good outlets for their own personal issues that might be happening for them.

Jo:

Wow. So this whole concept of emotional contagion might be new for you. <Laugh> it’s not new for Julie <laugh>. I’ve got got a few things I wanna pull out there, but can you just help us understand this concept of emotional contagion? Because I can imagine health professionals listening to this go, oh, I don’t do that. ’cause I switch my emotions off. Like, I make sure that I don’t do that.

Julie:

Yeah, It’s really hard to switch it off because we catch emotions automatically and it’s something that happens without our intention or not. When you think about our communication. So if we take a step back and we look at our communication, 93% of what we communicate is not verbal. It’s in our body language. So you might not even say anything, but it’s just how you present can actually send a message if you’re having a crappy day or not. So I think it’s so important that we think about how do we present ourselves? And even when I go inside nursing homes, I really make a conscious effort. 

Like, you really need to switch it off because if we talk about having face masks on, if we talk about not being able to show our faces,  body language can communicate so, so much. And I think that this is really important when you think about people who might have sensory impairment as well, or cognitive changes, how do we communicate with them and how do they communicate with us? And even if we are not a mental health professional, if we are physio, if we are podiatrist, how do we help them feel safe and secure with whatever service that we are providing? And, how do we communicate with the workers as well in that context. I know when I first started visiting nursing homes, it was like, oh my God, you’re a psychologist. But I need to talk to someone like you. It’s like, no, I’m here to see Betty. I’m not here to talk to whatever the worker is there. So emotional contagion is an automatic process. And I think that we just need to be aware of that, and that this is something that will happen and that we can catch other people’s emotions, not just necessarily by being in the room with them. You can catch it by putting the news on and seeing what’s all the awful things that are happening around the world. It’s not gonna make you feel great. And, I think that in the workplace as well, like in the age care context particularly, it can impact how we feel and as a result of how we feel, what we do and how we and how we behave.

Jo:

Yeah. So we’ve got a whole new contagion to be mindful of now, emotional contagion. So, can I just share a kind of a thought that’s come through my head and see if I’ve got it right because I know this concept can sound really simple, but it’s actually quite sophisticated. So we’re gonna pretend for a moment that I own a multi-site, multi-clinician practice, but I am super worried about the finances of this business. And for the last week, the bank’s been calling me, I’m overdrawn, my overdraft is into overdraft because sometimes we have a cashflow crisis. And then I’ve noticed that our pipeline for all our clients has dried up. And then the NDIS has gone and changed here in Australia, which is one of our insurance companies has just decided that it’s gonna cease a whole heap of services that I’ve built my business on. So I’m coming into my workplace in the morning, and I’m usually, hi, hi, hi. But underlying that masking is this irritability, is this fear, I probably don’t even realise it. I’m probably talking about money in conversations all the time. Like, can we find the cheaper toilet paper, please? Can we cancel this subscription? It’s the sort of thing that contributes to emotional contagion.

Julie:

Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, you’ve got all the external factors that are going on, but also the internal factors, like, am I good enough in doing my job? Am I a good leader? Am I a good employee? Am I a good human being? Am I a good mother, father all these things that can also impact how we feel within ourselves. And, a lot of that comes to obviously our own self-esteem, self-worth how we are processing what might be going on for us in the external world, in our own perceptions about our abilities and, the workload that we have as well in front of us. So it’s not uncommon. I mean, the stress levels that people experience in the day’s world and financial pressures that they can impact our own resilience and lead to higher levels of mental illnesses for a lot of people.

So I think it’s the kind of conversation that we need to also keep in mind that it’s not just our clients have these mental health conditions. We can have them ourselves, but it’s not a shame to actually reach out for help and support if you feel the need to do that. So it’s really hard to wear lots of hats. But again, going back to what I spoke about earlier, listening to your gut feeling and listening to what your body’s telling you about how you’re dealing with all these things is paramount to addressing burnout.

Jo:

Yes, absolutely. So let’s take that conversation now into creating, or disintegrating <laugh> safe systems of work. So whether we like to admit it or not, we are all responsible for our safety at work. So if you manage lead, have other people in your business, you have a requirement to create safe systems of work. And here in Australia, if you are found to not have safe systems of work, you will be heavily penalised. And that might bankrupt you. But not only will you get hit with fines, you will lose staff and you’ll find it difficult to recruit staff, you will struggle with client retention, you will have clients dropping off. So Julie, how does this emotional contagion component contribute to either a safe or unsafe system of work?

Julie:

Oh, this sounds like a big thesis I can write <laugh>. I think we need to look at how we separate positive and negative emotions? And how do we celebrate positive things that might be happening in the workplace? Do we just carry on and pretend it didn’t happen? Or do we just normalise it and say like happy staff, happy clients, happy days. I think we need to have a system in place around the rewards, the recognition for staff, whatever that might be. It might not just be like 50 bucks in an envelope, but other ways that people can be recognised for the work that they do and the outcomes that they achieve. And then also normalise that it’s okay to get support if people are not feeling okay.

If people are feeling stressed if they’re not having good night’s sleep, what is the flexibility there within the workplace? So,not just going, call the EAP, make an appointment to see a psychologist. It’s like, well, if you haven’t slept well, you’re not gonna feel well, and you’re not gonna probably do a good job day at work. So what is that? What flexibility have you got there around having a mental health day or taking it easy or maybe switching off for an hour, half an hour, having a nap, and then continuing and pushing through. Because I think it’s so important that we notice those things and how they can impact us and our work performance as well. And, we are so trained in pushing things aside, blocking it away not my problem, not my issue.

But I think by ignoring those signs, then you increase the risk of experiencing burnout. So noticing where you carry stress yourself which part of your body feels tired. Is it in your shoulders, in your chest, in your stomach, and saying, what do I need at this point of time to calm down my nervous system? And so I say for some people it could be as simple as working on sleep hygiene. Switching off your phones, switching off devices, just reading half an hour before bed and trying to go to bed at, same time each night, monitoring your alcohol intake. Some people say, well wine helps me get to sleep. Wine is okay once a week or so, but every night to get you to sleep, it’s probably not a very helpful coping strategy. And looking at what would really foster that really good work and life balance. And I think that workplaces can do so much better in terms of promoting better work and life balance and helping workers switch off. So you know, that we are not expecting people to reply to emails outside of work hours that we have healthy sustainable working hours and that we are promoting rest and recovery as well.

Jo:

I like that. How are we as business owners promoting adequate rest and recovery for our employees and our staff? Because the myth around everybody needs eight hours of sleep a night is a myth. Like we know that that’s been debunked now. That was research that was done a long time ago on men. How are we using the knowledge and skills that our team members actually bring with their own resilience, rather than going see an EAP counsellor who will show you how to be resilient, going, well, what do you already bring? What do you bring here to this workplace? What makes you resilient? So one of the safe systems of work, I’m having this conversation a lot at the moment. And  the thing that health professionals always bring up for me is the amount of admin I have to do that keeps me from seeing clients. And the amount of admin that I have to do that keeps me from doing the work that I thought I was gonna do. And that leads to feeling pressured. That leads to feeling disengaged which is a huge problem. And then it stops you from wanting to turn up. And in time what will happen is you will feel bad about the work you’re doing, you won’t care anymore. And then your client work will start to suffer. And then you start telling yourself that you’re bad at your job, you’re bad at this work. But highlighting that safe system of work is, I need a different way of managing this admin. I need somebody to work with me to help. And I know admin is a huge issue in aged care as well, <laugh>. It’s like, I’d rather sit and feed my clients than write about feeding my clients

Julie:

When I started working in aged care. So like 2009 and 2010, each client or resident in aged care used to have a physical folder where staff would write at the end of the day open bowels, pain medication, whatever. And a couple of lines about activities that they had. Now it’s all electronic and they have to reflect all the activities that they’ve done and they’re spending so much more time in front of the computers than actually with clients. And for business owners, yes, maybe you can delegate some of your admin tasks and look at what is it that you have to do, what you can delegate, what you can batch up. But for aged care workers, admin is such a big part of their lives and they can’t necessarily delegate. You can’t get someone else to write your case notes, you know? You can’t get to write that you help client bath or anything like that. And then even in the leadership roles or in senior roles, when they have to justify how they’re spending government funding,they have themselves. So I think that it comes down to structuring the working hours, stretching the day when do you feel better in terms of your productivity levels and, when you can fit in still a little bit of fun and enjoyment tasks within your workday.

Jo:

Oh my goodness, fun and enjoyment in my workday when I’m hearing sad, horrible stories all day. Who knew that that would be helpful? <Laugh>.

Julie:

Even with elders who have very sad stories and circumstances, there’s always a little bit of humour. There’s always some fun stories along the way. An it’s interesting. I’ve kept one nursing home for lots of years that I’ve been going to one day a month. I feel so energised when I go there. Like, it’s just so rewarding. And I get little notes saying thank you for visiting me. You know, it’s just so sweet. And this goes back to the beginning of our interview. I enjoy those interactions, but I don’t necessarily wanna do that every day of my week. One day a month is enough for me to do that. And I feel fulfilled, right? And, I think that this time and place for everything, so we don’t need to monetise everything we do or do a lot of the same thing again and again. We can definitely have a range of services. And that balance has helped me a lot.

Jo:

That’s a really powerful insight there, Julie. So it’s one day a month is enough for you to sit there and be recognised, Hey, my clients at this nursing home really appreciate me. And that one day a month of that repeated exposure for yourself is enough to help you go, cool, I can go in and now tackle this next problem of why we just don’t have enough people to fill rosters.

Julie:

Absolutely. And it helps me ’cause I’m just finishing my second book at the moment, and I’ve put together some activities. So I print them out and I show elders, and I’m like, Hey, does this look like a fun activity you might want to do about self-reflection about facts or opinions or whatever tasks I wanna do. Like I’ve got firsthand contact with elder so they feel that they are contributing, that they’re being consulted. And, so it’s a win-win situation because they give me feedback that I need, but also they feel like they, they’re my advisors, you know? But as I said, one day a month is more than enough to do that.

Jo:

Well, and one day a month for Julie is more than enough. But I would like that daily if I had one. This is why I often sign off my emails to my team members going, may all your clients say thank you today, because a client saying thank you to me would make me go, oh, I can do this again. I can turn around and do this again. I can write that report. I really don’t wanna write purely because you said that, thank you. It’s not like you have one negative experience, so you need to balance it out with a positive experience. It’s the weight of these experiences. So you might have 29 days in the month where you can just keep doing the work and you’re doing a really good job, and you just need that one day a month like Julie does, where you’re getting some of that positive interaction or more fulfilling interaction. I need something each day. I need something daily to help me wake myself up from that. So this is also a process about self-discovery. Julie, am I hearing you now?

Julie:

Absolutely. And, in my own life, like with my work life and balance juggling two young kids, my marriage, my lots of projects that I have on, like, I also look for those little wins in a day. And so for me, it’s not always about having that positive interaction with an older person every day. I don’t need that every day, but I need low lying fruit every day where I can do first thing in the morning, tick it off, and I feel good. So for me, it’s about going for a walk. I’m going to the gym. I’m up before five, and I walk the dog, and by 6-6.30am, I’ve ticked off quite a few things off my list, and that’s when my kids start waking up.

And so routine helps me be present for them for breakfast, for packing lunch boxes, drink bottles, sunscreen, and then I drop them off. And then in the afternoon, a big part of my day-to-day life, and my husband finds this hilarious, is I help out at my daughter’s school, we have a chicken coop. And even like this morning before I came here to do this interview, I had to go and fill up the chicken coop with mulch. And it’s like, why would I be doing that as a successful business owner? But that helps me with my work and life balance. And I know that this morning I had 15 chickens say thank you to me because they have a nicer home. And so I think it’s all about that balance. It doesn’t mean because we are more successful that we don’t do simple things that that are fulfilling for us.

Jo:

That’s really powerful. I didn’t think of a chicken coop, but I think we’ve all got, there’s something that we can grab a hold of, whether it’s going for a walk or for a run, for me at the moment, it’s sitting in the sun for 20 minutes, like just being present in my beautiful backyard. I live in a national park just sitting there and stop stopping the self-talk that goes, I wanna be by the beach. I wanna be by the beach. It’s like, look at where you get to live. And we’ve got incredible amount of sunshine here in Australia. So thank you for my healthy dose of vitamin D. But I think that the importance of this conversation is that we can’t systematise the answers to the questions of burnout by just putting a system in place. That system has to be customised, not individualised, customised to the people working in it. So Julie and Jo would need different ways of workplaces helping us to be healthy and safe at work. Doesn’t mean one’s right, one’s wrong, but we both need different ways of that being done. You agree there, Julie?

Julie:

Yeah. And I think also for if we’re any new entrance to the industry as well, to recognise what they might need to help them, because I think that when I remember like when I first met you and I was early in my career, and it’s like, oh my God, we did so much to please our employers. We did so much travel, so much work. And I can even see it now, Jo, I’ve got a couple of friends who are my age and in early forties, who are single, who don’t have a family. And I can see how their workplace is actually exploiting it because no one else would go and fly interstate last minute. No one else would stay up late doing work.

And I feel like, wow, they really are being exploited in the way that someone who had a family wouldn’t ask them to do that.So I think that it’s really important that we check in with ourselves and that we know what would help us to promote our work and life balance. What would help us not just to put our laptops to sleep, but actually shut it down at the end of the workday so that we can rest and recharge. I mean, there’s 24 hours in a day. There’s certainly plenty of hours outside of work to look to focus on ourselves and our wellbeing

Jo:

As long as we’re not responding to emails every minute of the day, or we don’t have an expectation from a boss that is, I sent you an email, why haven’t you responded or fearing the phone calls. I went through that where it was like, oh my God, that person’s ringing me again. And I would be terrified. I’d live with this horrible sense of nausea in my stomach, just waiting for the phone to ring. It’s a frigging tool. How did I become so scared of a phone? Like, that’s ridiculous.

Julie:

Boundaries that we need to put in play and, and obviously maintain it. And if it’s important, they’ll leave you a message.

Jo:

Yeah, absolutely. And my voice message actually says, leave me a message, <laugh>. It’s like, I will return your call, but it’s gonna be in my time, and it’s gonna be at my pace. And if that’s not good enough for you, then you need to find someone else. So you get to go and see some other workplaces. Can you think of any examples? Don’t tell us the names. Please don’t do that. But where organisations are actually looking after potential burnout risks for their staff. Can you think of an example where someone’s doing that well?

Julie:

Yeah, absolutely. So there’s more and more awareness of these things, you know? So there’s a couple of larger organisations that might have an onsite gym, they might have onsite doctor, onsite psychologist. They might have regular massages that they offer in the workplaces and things like that. I like this week, yeah, it’s Women’s Health Week, but also it’s early educators week or early educators day. And so they had massage therapist come to my son’s daycare. And I was like, why can’t they do that once a month? Like, why is it one day a year?

So I think that these incentives don’t always need to be allowed about how we promote wellness in the workplace. It’s also the unspoken word about the flexibility around workplace. It is about those reasonable expectations that we put on workers so that they feel supported. And I think it also comes down then to those interactions that workers have with the leadership team around things when it comes to being able to maintain their personal wellbeing and work duties as well. So I don’t think it’s always like, oh big workplaces have great incentives. It’s not always the case. It is so much personalised. But I think that in 2024, we are becoming more and more aware about the impact of emotional labour and around psychological presence at work and around when it comes to emotional labour like showing emotions that you need to have in your role as opposed to your true feelings. So you think about people who might be in front of the house or always having to be pleasant, but actually feeling cracked within themselves, feeling tired, feeling sleepy, feeling exhausted. And the further they are away they are from their true feelings, the more likely they are to experience burnout.

Jo:

Ooh, <laugh>. So when you get to a comfortable position like me, where I can’t even recognise what I’m feeling anymore, it’s no wonder that I have been a crispy chicken strip for a little while. Like I have been burnt out.

Julie:

Yeah, yeah. And you’ve tricked yourself into not listening to those signs and not listening to those symptoms. And I think that that really gets hard when we are not being truthful to ourselves. It gets really hard when when we trick ourselves and push ourselves, and look, a little bit of stress is actually okay, and it motivates you. If we didn’t have any stress at all crossing busy roads, we’d get hit by cars. If we didn’t have any motivation, you wouldn’t be running a business. I wouldn’t be running a business. So a little bit of stress is actually okay, but it’s also about finding that optimal level. And even when we do find the optimal level, we can’t always be functioning at that optimal level that we still need to find tasks that switch off our nervous system and that are low stress so that we can recover and we can continue on.

So we can’t do 40 hours of amazing work every week, but then how do we manage those peaks and troughs and what do we do on a day where we feel like really stressed or sad or tired opposed to going, well I’m gonna procrastinate. I’m not gonna do anything because I actually need to do this report, but I don’t feel like writing this report, so I’m just gonna sit and stare at my screen for two hours. Well, it’s be better to spend 20 minutes in the garden looking at enjoying the sunshine and coming back to it as opposed to putting so many expectations of ourselves.

Jo:

Yeah. You really highlighted a great point there. I mean, you highlighted a lot of great points. This one I wanna pull out a lot of business owners and managers like to have this mentality that if I can just get my team performing at peak performance every single day, I will be fine. It’s actually unachievable

Julie:

It’s not sustainable.

Jo:

It’s not sustainable. Yeah. So if you are relying on your whole team to be at their peak every single day to help your business flourish, you’ve got an unsafe system of work.

Julie:

Absolutely. And people are gonna leave.

Jo:

Yep. They will leave. And we are noticing it, we don’t have enough health professionals coming into the profession to meet the needs and the “easier work” is now being done by AI and chatbots, which means we’ve got more complexity coming in front of us, which we are not necessarily fit for. So we’ve got a whole heap of questions about workforce and where we fit into it that we really need to start asking. And Julie’s given us some great words to go and search now, things like emotional contagion and emotional labour <laugh>. And she’s obviously got a new PhD to write because she’s gonna go back to this recording and go, woo hoo. Look at what I can do there. Julie, this has been such a powerful conversation. I feel like we could talk forever, but you and I both have other things to do today, right? If you could give one piece of advice to say a health professional who’s been in their career for about two years about burnout, what would that piece of advice be?

Julie:

It would be to evaluate what you’re doing at the moment, to do a self-check around your own self-care and around your own wellbeing and evaluate where you are going with work, where you want to be. And, then obviously to have a little bit more trust in your gut feeling. And to be honest with yourself, I think it’s really hard if we are not being honest with ourselves. So my main messenge would be, be honest with your gut feeling, but also do a bit of self-evaluation around where you are with work life balance at this point of time.

Jo:

Yeah. And that’s great advice for anybody at any stage of their work life. Me as somebody who’s recently sold part of her business, for people who are just coming out on the business building journey, like, we’ve gotta constantly be reflecting and going, how is this serving what I wanna be? How do I wanna be turning up in the world? How is it serving me? How is it serving my family? Cause when we’re honest with ourselves, like Julie was a long time ago, she went, this is not serving me. <Laugh>.

Julie:

Absolutely. And I think for people listening to the podcast who are working for others it’s also about that perceived organisational support. And it’s about you might not necessarily need to engage in all the benefits that your workplace offers you, but just if you feel supported, it makes a big difference. Last night, I had a message from someone who worked in aged care for quite a while. And, he reached out to me last night and he is like, oh, Julie, I’m just messaging you to let you know, I’m taking up a job at with another provider. I’m leaving my workplace just because I don’t feel supported. Well, he didn’t say I, I don’t feel supported, but you know, he’s been telling me for a while, he doesn’t feel supported and he’s been feeling burnt out. But interestingly, he’s taking a job elsewhere with a lower pay and less hours because he has better like he feels better connection with the manager at that place. And I think it’s interesting when we think about work and financial commitments, how important it is to feel supported in the workplace and he’s gonna go and take a pay cut and do less hours just because he feels supported in that workplace.

Jo:

Holy guacamole, Batman. Yeah. Like that for any business owner listening right now, we love to throw money at our staff thinking that that is going to be the thing that fixes the problem. And we know from research, it’s not, people stay because of leadership. People leave because of leadership. And it’s not about you being a hard and fast leader like we thought we needed to be. It’s about people feeling supported by you.

Julie:

Yeah. That’s huge.

Jo:

That’s huge. And I mean, in 2024 when we experiencing so many rising costs of living and everything, that he’s actually made that decision to go, no, I need to feel safe and secure in my workplace. You know, Marlow, basic hierarchy needs, he needs to have that. He hasn’t had it at the place where he’s been working now, and it’s been really hard, and he’s been feeling a lot of burnout. And so he’s jumping ships and he’s going somewhere else where he knows he’s gonna get it. It’s gonna cost him. He’ll have to take a pay cut, but ultimately he’ll be in better mood, he’ll feel better, and he’ll deliver an amazing service to those clients. Those residents are lucky to have him.

Julie:

Absolutely.

Jo:

So, even though you are just 80 kilometers away in this really amazing looking podcast studio, by the way when we get to hang out in real life and I get to order a coffee for you, what am I ordering?

Julie:

Oh, Jo, you’ll have to get me English breakfast tea with a bit of milk

Jo:

Okay. I can do that. Hope it comes in a really pretty teapot though. Yes. <laugh>. have noticed that tea drinkers have really, really pretty paraphernalia to go with their tea drinking English breakfast tea. Yeah, I can do that. Not a problem. Julie, this has been another fantastic interview. I’m incredibly grateful. How can people find you? Where do they go to find your resources and who you are and to stay connected with you?

Julie:

Sure. So my website is wisecare.com au. They can find all the details there. An my hashtag for my social media is Dr. Julie Bajic Smith, but I think wisecare.com au is the easier one. <Laugh>

Jo:

Yeah. I just gonna encourage everybody to follow Julie on Instagram. Just because the stories that she shares when she’s had an interaction with an older person gives me so much hope about the future. I just find it really refreshing. You probably don’t know that, Julie, but I just refined your posts really, really refreshing.

Julie:

Thank you. And I always think like, oh I don’t wanna be like gloating, but it’s so lovely to have these even like, monthly interactions that I have with them. ’cause It really enables me to share those stories with them and their wisdom. You know, they’re so clever, so, cheeky. <laugh>

Jo:

<Laugh> cheeky is a good thing for anyone who is running for their Aussie dictionary. We like cheekiness. Sometimes we use it in multiple contexts, but that’s enough for this podcast episode. Thank you so much, Julie. You have been listening to the Entrepreneurial Clinician Podcast. We are currently in season four, where we are talking about all things burnout. How do we create safe systems of work for ourselves? And as we’ve learned today, how do we actually practice authenticity and realness and reality with ourselves when we are forced to work in a way where that isn’t always helpful? Stay tuned for our next episode, and I look forward to seeing you and talking to you very soon.