Wellness is not just the absence of stress; it is the presence of fulfillment, energy, and the ability to thrive. For primary care physicians, achieving work-life balance can feel impossible. As a meds/peds physician, I’ve struggled with finding this balance. Work is an integral part of life, but when it becomes all-consuming, it leads to burnout. Instead of separating work from life, I’ve reframed my approach: work is a valued part of my life, but it must be given the same priority as home, family, and personal well-being.
Primary care physicians serve as the glue of the healthncare system, shouldering immense responsibility. Each day involves meeting new patients, preventing illness, managing acute crises, and keeping up with evolving medical guidelines. On top of this, we manage administrative burdens — charting, inbox messages, and systemic inefficiencies — all of which extend beyond clinic hours. The expectation is to complete the "required" work of the day, knowing that it starts anew tomorrow.
Personally, these burdens led me to a breaking point. At one point, I found myself deeply overwhelmed, even experiencing suicidal thoughts. Seeking professional support and actively prioritizing my wellness has helped me navigate these challenges. Physicians deserve to care for themselves, and change is possible.
Recognizing the challenges is only the first step — what follows are strategies that have helped me reclaim a sense of control and balance.
Optimize Your Workspace
Small changes in your physical and digital environment can improve efficiency. I redesigned my workspace with a minimalist setup to enhance ergonomics and reduce clutter. Just by having a more comfortable working environment, I immediately felt better about the space I was occupying.
Optimize Your Workflow
In addition to your workspace, small changes to your workflow can considerably improve that sense of balance. One change I made was remapping my Dragon dictation software to include my nine most-used keystrokes and dot phrases. This reduced unnecessary typing and improved documentation speed.
Start Small
At first, any change to your workflow will feel more disruptive than helpful. Therefore, start small. For me, I committed to creating new dot phrases only for each subject I found myself repeating. This improved my efficiency and greatly decreased my frustration. As an example, when I found myself acknowledging a problem being managed by a specialist, I created a simple dot phrase: Chronic concern. Symptoms stable. Managed by ***. Plan per their recommendations. No changes today.
Start Slow
When I started making my new dot phrases, I committed to only doing one per day. I knew that some days I would be able to create multiple phrases, while other days even two would feel like a struggle. If I set unrealistic expectations, I would view those days as failures, making the process unsustainable. By setting a realistic goal — just one per day — I ensured that even on difficult days, I was making progress.
Set Boundaries
Setting clear limits on work-related tasks improves mental clarity and reduces burnout. One boundary I set for myself was to finish all my notes before leaving for the day. This greatly helped my mental state at home, as I no longer felt burdened by unfinished documentation.
Another key boundary was not checking emails on my days off. To reinforce this, I schedule email responses to send on the next business day, preventing unnecessary back-and-forth outside of work hours. This simple change reinforced a culture of respect for personal time. Additionally, I include a well-being notice at the end of my emails, which provides clarity about response times and sets expectations for communication.
Do More with Less
As I created more dot phrases, I encountered issues. Initially, my dot phrases lacked necessary billing and coding language, requiring me to make manual updates. Additionally, I found myself accumulating many similar dot phrases, which led to inefficiencies. To solve this, I refined my approach, creating versatile dot phrases that covered multiple scenarios. For example:
Chronic concern addressed today. Overall symptoms are stable at today’s visit. No change in plan and management at this time. Continue medication as below at current dosage and frequency. Plan to follow up at next scheduled visit.
By consolidating dot phrases, I reduced back-and-forth discussions with my coding team and streamlined my workflow.
Incorporate New Efficiencies as Able
Wellness isn’t a one-time fix — it’s an evolving process. After optimizing my workspace, implementing dot phrases, and leveraging hotkeys, I thought I had maximized my efficiency. However, when my health system introduced Abridge, AI-powered note taking tool, I was open to trying it. By integrating this tool, I reduced my daily documentation time to just 18 minutes per day — a game-changer for my work-life balance.
Good Enough is Not a Bad Thing
Perfectionism can be a trap. None of the strategies I’ve implemented — my dot phrases, my well-being notice, my use of Dragon, or AI-assisted note-taking — are perfect. But the pursuit of perfection can destroy us.
We only have so many hours a day to give — to our patients, to our families, and most importantly, to ourselves. I know my dot phrase example above isn’t flawless. However, by creating it and binding it to a hotkey, I calculated that I saved roughly 20 hours per year just by using that one dot phrase. By combining all of these efficiency tools, I estimate I’ve saved the equivalent of five full 40-hour workweeks in a year.
Achieving balance is not about perfection — it’s about intentionality. While these strategies have worked well for me, I know not all of them will work for everyone. However, I hope that by reading this, something will spark inside you — a way to help you take back your time and work toward that goal of wellness and balance.
What are some strategies and tools you’ve implemented to improve workflow and make more time for your life? Share in the comments!
Dr. Zachary Wood, MD, MPH is a dual board-certified pediatric and internal medicine physician in Greenville, SC. He is passionate about improving physician wellness and fostering work-life balance in primary care.
Image by Westend61 / Getty Images
