How to keep the right balance between your work, social media and private life

How often do you feel stressed, tired or exhausted as a direct result of working? Increasingly, vet practitioners are under pressure to keep up with consultations, clinical procedures, administration and now a new focus on engaging with social media. Emails, websites, blogs and social networking can all encroach on non-work time, reducing opportunities to rest and recover.

There is an extensive research literature in occupational psychology which highlights the importance of switching off and recovering from work. It has long been known that extensive and prolonged workload stress can lead to exhaustion and burnout. Hans Selye proposed the ‘General Adaptation Syndrome’ (GAS) as a model to account for this effect due to long-term stressors, which can be associated with highly pressured work environments⁽¹⁾. Stressors come in a variety of forms which we do not always automatically recognise. Most of us would probably be aware of physical stressors such as work environments where we have limited control over excessive noise and temperature or environments with poor ergonomic design leading to physical strain. Additionally, excessive workload, work-pace and schedules, which impact on our social and personal time, are all commonly recognised as stressful. However, we may not always be aware of the stresses associated with role ambiguity or conflict, where our expected professional performance is not congruent with our perception of our identity or personal values. Additionally, we may not recognise the strain ‘emotional labour’ may cause us in our day-to-day interactions with clients and colleagues which require us to use empathy to support others.

Any one of the stressors or their combinations can cause the physiological stress response associated with alarm (initial response), resistance (coping but still in a state of stress arousal) and exhaustion (burnout from long-term stress-associated arousal) ⁽¹⁾. Exhaustion can have an impact at a physiological level in terms of detrimentally affecting health and well-being. There are many studies which have demonstrated the negative impact of exhaustion on, for example, sleep, mood, fatigue and physical health⁽²⁾. Not unsurprisingly then, exhaustion can impact on practitioner levels of engagement and self-efficacy or the sense of ability to succeed and accomplish tasks, as well as leading to deterioration in memory, reaction time and task performance at the behavioural level⁽³⁾. [...]