Decompression

The problem with long working hours in hospital is not that we get overloaded. The problem is that we have had almost no idea how to call it a day.

We've decided that there should not be long shift for doctors looking after quarantined or suspected coronavirus patients in our hospital. If safety and protection are what we sought in such high-risk areas, we should limit the hours of physical and mental stress from putting on and off the full personal protective equipment, as well as mindful hand washing.

I settled in and handled the shift work with reasonably aplomb. I never complained. But while I managed to adjust, I knew there was something amiss. The eureka moment came when I viewed the TED talk by the psychologist Guy Winch. To steal a remark from Guy Winch, we need clear guardrails. We have to define when we switch off every night, when we stop working.

Here's my way of rebooting: I start running home after work, a habit I had recently forgotten.

The very simple and yet empowering action of changing shoes to running footwear defines a boundary from working mode.

A signal for an upcoming break.

There's nothing I like better than a physical springboard to decompress. It works like the step of decompression before surfacing of a scuba diver who has been breathing compressed air (somewhat like a suffocating N95 mask) in deep water.

It's hard to say exactly how important that decompression is, until you find out what it's like without it.

Just before yesterday, at the end of my shift, my mind was so clouded that it allowed dumping my fountain pen with working clothes into the collection bin. In case you skipped over the last sentence, I'll repeat it. I threw away my favorite fountain pen. Seldom have I been so wrong.

Little did I know my faux pas until I was experiencing flow on the running route back home. My body and mind was wide awake by then, and in a matter of nanoseconds, I registered the plan to go to the collection bin first thing the next morning.

It sounds like a magic moment, and it is. I didn't lose my fountain pen. And neither my marbles.