Physician assistants undoubtedly work hard. A doctor might have the expertise to direct treatment, but there is no denying that the long hours of attending to patients and, in many cases, carrying out those treatments falls to the physician assistant. If you find yourself browsing the health job boards for a physician assistant role, then you are probably already aware that it’s a serious time commitment. Before you even begin, it makes sense to start planning how you are going to strike a good work-life balance within this most demanding of jobs.
The good news is that it is perfectly possible to strike a work-life balance as a physician assistant, but you will need to employ some serious planning to pull it off. The most important advice is certainly to prepare for the hours you are going to have to spend working in this rewarding – but undoubtedly demanding – job. If you’re already in the role – and if you find yourself working hard – then it’s certainly the right job for you. You wouldn’t be doing it otherwise. However, there is no doubt that it can sometimes feel like the job is oozing into nearly every other area of your life. Thankfully, you are neither alone nor the first to be in this position. Moreover, there are certainly ways you can alleviate this problem.
Tips for Managing Your Time as Physician Assistant
Here follows some top advice on how to manage your time as a physician assistant. Regardless of what job you are doing, a proper work-life balance is essential. Here’s how to pull it off:
- Schedule Smart
The great advantage of scheduling is not that it arranges your working hours in a manageable way. It certainly does do that, but the emphasis should perhaps be placed on the fact that it gives you a time when you can actually stop your work. It’s very common for physician assistants to lose track of the time when wrapped up in the duties of patient care. Nevertheless, if you can give yourself a regular stopping time every day, then you can designate the hours afterwards to attend to the other areas of your life.
- Set Limitations and Expectations
You need to know how much you can actually do. And that is not always the same thing as how many hours you can spend working before you run out of energy. That is the wrong limit to set and counts as a totally unrealistic expectation. It is also a sure way to find yourself working all waking hours. Nobody can do everything, and the ability to simply say “no” will take you a long way to establishing a healthy work-life balance.
- Find the Right Job
When you find yourself on recruitment sites like Health Jobs Nationwide and are looking into Physician Assistant roles, it should be perfectly possible to find out the number of hours you will be expected to work. If you have already set your limitations, you can choose the right job – or move to a better one.
- Avoid Distractions
Once you have designated what times you will be working, the goal then becomes to work to the best of your ability within those hours. By avoiding distractions and making sure that these are the hours in which you work flat out, you will avoid that work spilling over into hours you should be spending elsewhere.
As you can probably tell from these tips, it all comes back to time management. Work hard when you need to work but designate free time. Finally, make sure that free time is actually free.
