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Before the pandemic, the biggest parent-related challenge for Charlie Wray, DO, MS, a hospitalist and assistant clinical professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, was “figuring out what I was going to pack in my kids’ lunches. Like most people, we were very much in our groove – we knew when my wife was going to leave work, and which day I’d pick up the kids,” Dr. Wray said. “I reflect back on that and think how easy it was.”
The old life – the one that seems so comparatively effortless – has been gone for close to a year now. And with the reopening of schools in the fall of 2020, hospitalists with school-age kids felt – and are still feeling – the strain in a variety of ways.
‘Podding up’
“The largest struggles that we have had involve dealing with the daily logistics of doing at-home learning,” said Dr. Wray, father to a 6-year-old and a 3-year-old. Dr. Wray and his wife are both physicians and have been juggling full work schedules with virtual school for their older child, who is not old enough to be autonomous. “For parents who have younger children who require one-on-one attention for the vast majority of their learning, that certainly takes more of a toll on your time, energy, and resources.”
Uncertainty has created anxiety about the future. “We have no idea what’s going to be happening next month. How do we plan for that? How do we allocate our time for that? That has been a real struggle for us, especially for a two-physician household where we are both considered front line and are both needing to be at the hospital or the clinic on a fairly regular basis,” he said.
Then there is the never-ending stress. Dr. Wray observed that physicians are used to operating under stress, especially at work. “What I think is gnawing at me, and probably a lot of other physicians out there, is you go home and that stress is still there. It’s really hard to escape it. And you wake up in the morning and it’s there, whereas in the past, you could have a nice day. There’s little separation between work and domestic life right now.”
Having to work later into the evening has eaten into time for himself and time with his wife too. “That’s another side effect of the pandemic – it not only takes your time during the day, it takes the time you used to have at night to relax.”
To manage these challenges, Dr. Wray said he and his wife regularly double check their schedules. The family has also created a pod – “I think ‘podded up’ is a verb now,” he laughed – with another family and hired a recent college graduate to help the kids with their virtual learning. “Is it as good as being at school and amongst friends and having an actual teacher there? Of course not. But I think it’s the best that we can do.”
Dr. Wray said his employers have been flexible and understanding regarding scheduling conflicts that parents can have. “It’s really difficult for us, so oftentimes I struggle to see how other people are pulling this off. We recognize how fortunate we are, so that’s something I never want to overlook.”
Dividing and conquering
The biggest prepandemic issue for Sridevi Alla, MD, a hospitalist at Baptist Memorial Health in Jackson, Miss., and mother to four children – a 10-year-old, 6-year-old, 2-year-old, and a 9-month-old – was finding a babysitter on the weekend to take her kids out somewhere to burn off energy.
That’s a noticeable departure from the current demand to be not just a parent, but a teacher and a counselor too, thanks to virtual school, noted Dr. Alla. “You are their everything now,” she said. “They don’t have friends. They don’t have any other atmosphere or learning environment to let out their energy, their emotions. You have become their world.”
The beginning of the pandemic was particularly stressful for Dr. Alla, who is in the United States on an H-1B visa. “It was totally worrisome because you’re putting yourself at risk with patients who have the coronavirus, despite not knowing what your future itself is going to be like or what your family’s future is going to be like if anything happens to you,” she said. “We are fortunate we have our jobs. A lot of my immigrant friends lost theirs in the middle of this and they’re still trying to find jobs.”
Dr. Alla’s first challenge was whether to send her older two children to school or keep them at home to do virtual learning. The lack of information from the schools at first did not help that process, but she and her husband ended up choosing virtual school, a decision they still occasionally question.
Next, they had to find child care, and not just someone who could look after the younger two kids – they needed someone with the ability to also help the older ones with their homework.
Though initially the family had help, their first nanny had to quit because her roommate contracted COVID. “After that, we didn’t have help and my husband decided to work from home,” said Dr. Alla. “As of now, we’re still looking for child care. And the main issues are the late hours and the hospitalist week-on, week-off schedule.”
“It’s extremely hard,” she reflected. “At home, there’s no line. A 2-year-old doesn’t understand office time or personal time.” Still, Dr. Alla and her husband are maintaining by dividing up responsibilities and making sure they are always planning ahead.
Maintaining a routine
The greatest challenge for Heather Nye, MD, PhD, a hospitalist and professor of clinical medicine at UCSF, has been “maintaining normalcy for the kids.” She mourns the loss of a normal childhood for her kids, however temporary. “Living with abandon, feeling like you’re invincible, going out there and breaking your arm, meeting people, not fearing the world – those are not things we can instill in them right now,” she said.
The mother of an eighth grader and a second grader, Dr. Nye said their school district did not communicate well about how school would proceed. The district ended up offering only virtual school, with no plans for even hybrid learning in the future, leaving parents scrambling to plan.
Dr. Nye lucked out when her youngest child was accepted for a slot at a day camp offered through a partnership between the YMCA and UCSF. However, her eighth grader did not do well with distance learning in the spring, so having that virtual school as the only option has been difficult.
“Neither of the kids are doing really well in school,” she said. Her older one is overwhelmed by all the disparate online platforms and her youngest is having a hard time adjusting to differences like using a virtual pen. “The learning itself without question has suffered. You wonder about evaluation and this whole cohort of children in what will probably be more or less a lost year.”
Routines are the backbone of the family’s survival. “I think one of the most important things for kids in any stage of development is having a routine and being comfortable with that routine because that creates a sense of wellbeing in this time of uncertainty,” Dr. Nye said.
Neither Dr. Nye nor her husband, a geriatrician, have cut back on their work, so they are balancing a full plate of activities with parenting. Though their family is managing, “there are streaks of days where we’re like: ‘Are we failing our children?’ I’m sure every parent out there is asking themselves: ‘Am I doing enough?’” But she said, “We’re very, very lucky. We got that [camp] slot, we have the money to pay for it, and we both have flexible jobs.”
Rallying resources
Avital O’Glasser, MD, a hospitalist and associate professor of medicine at Oregon Health and Science University, Portland, fervently wished she could clone herself when the pandemic first started. Not only were her kids suddenly thrown into online classes, but she was pulled in to create a new service line for the COVID response at her clinic.
“The number of times that I said I think I need a time turner from Harry Potter. ... I felt that nothing was getting done even close to adequately because we were cutting corners left and right,” she said.
Thankfully, things have simmered down and Dr. O’Glasser is now working from home 5 or 6 days a week while her husband, a lawyer, goes to his job. “I think stress is lower now, but that’s in large part because, by the end of June, I really had to just stop and acknowledge how stressed I was and do a dramatic realignment of what I was doing for myself in terms of mental health support and bandwidth,” she said. Part of that involved realizing that the family needed a homeschool nanny for their 10-year-old and 7-year-old. “It’s been a lifesaver,” said Dr. O’Glasser.
Though life is on more of an even keel now, stress pops up in unexpected ways. “My youngest has pretty intense separation anxiety from me. Even with getting attention all day from our homeschool nanny, the day after I’m out of the house at the hospital, he really clings to me,” Dr. O’Glasser said. There’s sibling rivalry too, in an attempt to get parental attention.
Setting boundaries between work and home was her biggest challenge prepandemic, and that has not changed. “You’re trying to find that happy balance between professional development and family,” Dr. O’Glasser said. “Where do I cut corners? Do I try to multitask but spread myself thin? How do I say no to things? When am I going to find time to do laundry? When am I disconnecting? I think that now it’s facets of the same conundrum, but just manifested in different ways.”
She emphasized that parents should go easy on themselves right now. “A lot of parenting rules went out the window. My kids have had more screen time…and the amount of junk food they eat right now? Celebrate the wins.” Dr. O’Glasser chuckled about how her definition of a “win” has changed. “The bar now is something that I may never have considered a win before. Just seize those small moments. If my 7-year-old needs to do reading at my feet while I’m finishing notes from the day before, that’s okay,” she said.
How hospitalist groups can help
All four hospitalists had ideas about how hospitalist groups can help parents with school-age kids during the pandemic.
Providing child care at health care systems gives employees additional support, said Dr. Alla. Some of her friends have been unable to find child care because they are physicians who care for COVID patients and people do not want the extra risk. “I think any institution should think about this option because it’s very beneficial for an employee, especially for the long hours.”
Dr. Wray said he saw a program that matches up a hospitalist who has kids with one who does not in a type of buddy system, and they check in with each other. Then, if the parent has something come up, the other hospitalist can fill in and the parent can “pay it back” at another time. “This doesn’t put all the impetus on the schedule or on a single individual but spreads the risk out a little more and gives parents a bit of a parachute to make them feel like the system is supporting them,” he said.
“I would encourage groups to reach appropriate accommodations that are equitable and that don’t create discord because they’re perceived as unfair,” said Dr. O’Glasser. For instance, giving child care stipends, but limiting them to care at a licensed facility when some people might need to pay for a homeschool tutor. “Some of the policies that I saw seem to leave out the elementary school lot. You can’t just lump all kids together.”
Dr. Nye thought group leaders should take unseen pressures into account when evaluating employee performance. “I think we’re going to need to shift our yardstick because we can’t do everything now,” she said. “I’m talking about the extra things that people do that they’re evaluated on at the end of the year like volunteering for more shifts, sitting on committees, the things that likely aren’t in their job description. We’re going to have times when people are filling every last minute for their families. Face it with kindness and understanding and know that, in future years, things are going to go back to normal.”
Before the pandemic, the biggest parent-related challenge for Charlie Wray, DO, MS, a hospitalist and assistant clinical professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, was “figuring out what I was going to pack in my kids’ lunches. Like most people, we were very much in our groove – we knew when my wife was going to leave work, and which day I’d pick up the kids,” Dr. Wray said. “I reflect back on that and think how easy it was.”
The old life – the one that seems so comparatively effortless – has been gone for close to a year now. And with the reopening of schools in the fall of 2020, hospitalists with school-age kids felt – and are still feeling – the strain in a variety of ways.
‘Podding up’
“The largest struggles that we have had involve dealing with the daily logistics of doing at-home learning,” said Dr. Wray, father to a 6-year-old and a 3-year-old. Dr. Wray and his wife are both physicians and have been juggling full work schedules with virtual school for their older child, who is not old enough to be autonomous. “For parents who have younger children who require one-on-one attention for the vast majority of their learning, that certainly takes more of a toll on your time, energy, and resources.”
Uncertainty has created anxiety about the future. “We have no idea what’s going to be happening next month. How do we plan for that? How do we allocate our time for that? That has been a real struggle for us, especially for a two-physician household where we are both considered front line and are both needing to be at the hospital or the clinic on a fairly regular basis,” he said.
Then there is the never-ending stress. Dr. Wray observed that physicians are used to operating under stress, especially at work. “What I think is gnawing at me, and probably a lot of other physicians out there, is you go home and that stress is still there. It’s really hard to escape it. And you wake up in the morning and it’s there, whereas in the past, you could have a nice day. There’s little separation between work and domestic life right now.”
Having to work later into the evening has eaten into time for himself and time with his wife too. “That’s another side effect of the pandemic – it not only takes your time during the day, it takes the time you used to have at night to relax.”
To manage these challenges, Dr. Wray said he and his wife regularly double check their schedules. The family has also created a pod – “I think ‘podded up’ is a verb now,” he laughed – with another family and hired a recent college graduate to help the kids with their virtual learning. “Is it as good as being at school and amongst friends and having an actual teacher there? Of course not. But I think it’s the best that we can do.”
Dr. Wray said his employers have been flexible and understanding regarding scheduling conflicts that parents can have. “It’s really difficult for us, so oftentimes I struggle to see how other people are pulling this off. We recognize how fortunate we are, so that’s something I never want to overlook.”
Dividing and conquering
The biggest prepandemic issue for Sridevi Alla, MD, a hospitalist at Baptist Memorial Health in Jackson, Miss., and mother to four children – a 10-year-old, 6-year-old, 2-year-old, and a 9-month-old – was finding a babysitter on the weekend to take her kids out somewhere to burn off energy.
That’s a noticeable departure from the current demand to be not just a parent, but a teacher and a counselor too, thanks to virtual school, noted Dr. Alla. “You are their everything now,” she said. “They don’t have friends. They don’t have any other atmosphere or learning environment to let out their energy, their emotions. You have become their world.”
The beginning of the pandemic was particularly stressful for Dr. Alla, who is in the United States on an H-1B visa. “It was totally worrisome because you’re putting yourself at risk with patients who have the coronavirus, despite not knowing what your future itself is going to be like or what your family’s future is going to be like if anything happens to you,” she said. “We are fortunate we have our jobs. A lot of my immigrant friends lost theirs in the middle of this and they’re still trying to find jobs.”
Dr. Alla’s first challenge was whether to send her older two children to school or keep them at home to do virtual learning. The lack of information from the schools at first did not help that process, but she and her husband ended up choosing virtual school, a decision they still occasionally question.
Next, they had to find child care, and not just someone who could look after the younger two kids – they needed someone with the ability to also help the older ones with their homework.
Though initially the family had help, their first nanny had to quit because her roommate contracted COVID. “After that, we didn’t have help and my husband decided to work from home,” said Dr. Alla. “As of now, we’re still looking for child care. And the main issues are the late hours and the hospitalist week-on, week-off schedule.”
“It’s extremely hard,” she reflected. “At home, there’s no line. A 2-year-old doesn’t understand office time or personal time.” Still, Dr. Alla and her husband are maintaining by dividing up responsibilities and making sure they are always planning ahead.
Maintaining a routine
The greatest challenge for Heather Nye, MD, PhD, a hospitalist and professor of clinical medicine at UCSF, has been “maintaining normalcy for the kids.” She mourns the loss of a normal childhood for her kids, however temporary. “Living with abandon, feeling like you’re invincible, going out there and breaking your arm, meeting people, not fearing the world – those are not things we can instill in them right now,” she said.
The mother of an eighth grader and a second grader, Dr. Nye said their school district did not communicate well about how school would proceed. The district ended up offering only virtual school, with no plans for even hybrid learning in the future, leaving parents scrambling to plan.
Dr. Nye lucked out when her youngest child was accepted for a slot at a day camp offered through a partnership between the YMCA and UCSF. However, her eighth grader did not do well with distance learning in the spring, so having that virtual school as the only option has been difficult.
“Neither of the kids are doing really well in school,” she said. Her older one is overwhelmed by all the disparate online platforms and her youngest is having a hard time adjusting to differences like using a virtual pen. “The learning itself without question has suffered. You wonder about evaluation and this whole cohort of children in what will probably be more or less a lost year.”
Routines are the backbone of the family’s survival. “I think one of the most important things for kids in any stage of development is having a routine and being comfortable with that routine because that creates a sense of wellbeing in this time of uncertainty,” Dr. Nye said.
Neither Dr. Nye nor her husband, a geriatrician, have cut back on their work, so they are balancing a full plate of activities with parenting. Though their family is managing, “there are streaks of days where we’re like: ‘Are we failing our children?’ I’m sure every parent out there is asking themselves: ‘Am I doing enough?’” But she said, “We’re very, very lucky. We got that [camp] slot, we have the money to pay for it, and we both have flexible jobs.”
Rallying resources
Avital O’Glasser, MD, a hospitalist and associate professor of medicine at Oregon Health and Science University, Portland, fervently wished she could clone herself when the pandemic first started. Not only were her kids suddenly thrown into online classes, but she was pulled in to create a new service line for the COVID response at her clinic.
“The number of times that I said I think I need a time turner from Harry Potter. ... I felt that nothing was getting done even close to adequately because we were cutting corners left and right,” she said.
Thankfully, things have simmered down and Dr. O’Glasser is now working from home 5 or 6 days a week while her husband, a lawyer, goes to his job. “I think stress is lower now, but that’s in large part because, by the end of June, I really had to just stop and acknowledge how stressed I was and do a dramatic realignment of what I was doing for myself in terms of mental health support and bandwidth,” she said. Part of that involved realizing that the family needed a homeschool nanny for their 10-year-old and 7-year-old. “It’s been a lifesaver,” said Dr. O’Glasser.
Though life is on more of an even keel now, stress pops up in unexpected ways. “My youngest has pretty intense separation anxiety from me. Even with getting attention all day from our homeschool nanny, the day after I’m out of the house at the hospital, he really clings to me,” Dr. O’Glasser said. There’s sibling rivalry too, in an attempt to get parental attention.
Setting boundaries between work and home was her biggest challenge prepandemic, and that has not changed. “You’re trying to find that happy balance between professional development and family,” Dr. O’Glasser said. “Where do I cut corners? Do I try to multitask but spread myself thin? How do I say no to things? When am I going to find time to do laundry? When am I disconnecting? I think that now it’s facets of the same conundrum, but just manifested in different ways.”
She emphasized that parents should go easy on themselves right now. “A lot of parenting rules went out the window. My kids have had more screen time…and the amount of junk food they eat right now? Celebrate the wins.” Dr. O’Glasser chuckled about how her definition of a “win” has changed. “The bar now is something that I may never have considered a win before. Just seize those small moments. If my 7-year-old needs to do reading at my feet while I’m finishing notes from the day before, that’s okay,” she said.
How hospitalist groups can help
All four hospitalists had ideas about how hospitalist groups can help parents with school-age kids during the pandemic.
Providing child care at health care systems gives employees additional support, said Dr. Alla. Some of her friends have been unable to find child care because they are physicians who care for COVID patients and people do not want the extra risk. “I think any institution should think about this option because it’s very beneficial for an employee, especially for the long hours.”
Dr. Wray said he saw a program that matches up a hospitalist who has kids with one who does not in a type of buddy system, and they check in with each other. Then, if the parent has something come up, the other hospitalist can fill in and the parent can “pay it back” at another time. “This doesn’t put all the impetus on the schedule or on a single individual but spreads the risk out a little more and gives parents a bit of a parachute to make them feel like the system is supporting them,” he said.
“I would encourage groups to reach appropriate accommodations that are equitable and that don’t create discord because they’re perceived as unfair,” said Dr. O’Glasser. For instance, giving child care stipends, but limiting them to care at a licensed facility when some people might need to pay for a homeschool tutor. “Some of the policies that I saw seem to leave out the elementary school lot. You can’t just lump all kids together.”
Dr. Nye thought group leaders should take unseen pressures into account when evaluating employee performance. “I think we’re going to need to shift our yardstick because we can’t do everything now,” she said. “I’m talking about the extra things that people do that they’re evaluated on at the end of the year like volunteering for more shifts, sitting on committees, the things that likely aren’t in their job description. We’re going to have times when people are filling every last minute for their families. Face it with kindness and understanding and know that, in future years, things are going to go back to normal.”
Before the pandemic, the biggest parent-related challenge for Charlie Wray, DO, MS, a hospitalist and assistant clinical professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, was “figuring out what I was going to pack in my kids’ lunches. Like most people, we were very much in our groove – we knew when my wife was going to leave work, and which day I’d pick up the kids,” Dr. Wray said. “I reflect back on that and think how easy it was.”
The old life – the one that seems so comparatively effortless – has been gone for close to a year now. And with the reopening of schools in the fall of 2020, hospitalists with school-age kids felt – and are still feeling – the strain in a variety of ways.
‘Podding up’
“The largest struggles that we have had involve dealing with the daily logistics of doing at-home learning,” said Dr. Wray, father to a 6-year-old and a 3-year-old. Dr. Wray and his wife are both physicians and have been juggling full work schedules with virtual school for their older child, who is not old enough to be autonomous. “For parents who have younger children who require one-on-one attention for the vast majority of their learning, that certainly takes more of a toll on your time, energy, and resources.”
Uncertainty has created anxiety about the future. “We have no idea what’s going to be happening next month. How do we plan for that? How do we allocate our time for that? That has been a real struggle for us, especially for a two-physician household where we are both considered front line and are both needing to be at the hospital or the clinic on a fairly regular basis,” he said.
Then there is the never-ending stress. Dr. Wray observed that physicians are used to operating under stress, especially at work. “What I think is gnawing at me, and probably a lot of other physicians out there, is you go home and that stress is still there. It’s really hard to escape it. And you wake up in the morning and it’s there, whereas in the past, you could have a nice day. There’s little separation between work and domestic life right now.”
Having to work later into the evening has eaten into time for himself and time with his wife too. “That’s another side effect of the pandemic – it not only takes your time during the day, it takes the time you used to have at night to relax.”
To manage these challenges, Dr. Wray said he and his wife regularly double check their schedules. The family has also created a pod – “I think ‘podded up’ is a verb now,” he laughed – with another family and hired a recent college graduate to help the kids with their virtual learning. “Is it as good as being at school and amongst friends and having an actual teacher there? Of course not. But I think it’s the best that we can do.”
Dr. Wray said his employers have been flexible and understanding regarding scheduling conflicts that parents can have. “It’s really difficult for us, so oftentimes I struggle to see how other people are pulling this off. We recognize how fortunate we are, so that’s something I never want to overlook.”
Dividing and conquering
The biggest prepandemic issue for Sridevi Alla, MD, a hospitalist at Baptist Memorial Health in Jackson, Miss., and mother to four children – a 10-year-old, 6-year-old, 2-year-old, and a 9-month-old – was finding a babysitter on the weekend to take her kids out somewhere to burn off energy.
That’s a noticeable departure from the current demand to be not just a parent, but a teacher and a counselor too, thanks to virtual school, noted Dr. Alla. “You are their everything now,” she said. “They don’t have friends. They don’t have any other atmosphere or learning environment to let out their energy, their emotions. You have become their world.”
The beginning of the pandemic was particularly stressful for Dr. Alla, who is in the United States on an H-1B visa. “It was totally worrisome because you’re putting yourself at risk with patients who have the coronavirus, despite not knowing what your future itself is going to be like or what your family’s future is going to be like if anything happens to you,” she said. “We are fortunate we have our jobs. A lot of my immigrant friends lost theirs in the middle of this and they’re still trying to find jobs.”
Dr. Alla’s first challenge was whether to send her older two children to school or keep them at home to do virtual learning. The lack of information from the schools at first did not help that process, but she and her husband ended up choosing virtual school, a decision they still occasionally question.
Next, they had to find child care, and not just someone who could look after the younger two kids – they needed someone with the ability to also help the older ones with their homework.
Though initially the family had help, their first nanny had to quit because her roommate contracted COVID. “After that, we didn’t have help and my husband decided to work from home,” said Dr. Alla. “As of now, we’re still looking for child care. And the main issues are the late hours and the hospitalist week-on, week-off schedule.”
“It’s extremely hard,” she reflected. “At home, there’s no line. A 2-year-old doesn’t understand office time or personal time.” Still, Dr. Alla and her husband are maintaining by dividing up responsibilities and making sure they are always planning ahead.
Maintaining a routine
The greatest challenge for Heather Nye, MD, PhD, a hospitalist and professor of clinical medicine at UCSF, has been “maintaining normalcy for the kids.” She mourns the loss of a normal childhood for her kids, however temporary. “Living with abandon, feeling like you’re invincible, going out there and breaking your arm, meeting people, not fearing the world – those are not things we can instill in them right now,” she said.
The mother of an eighth grader and a second grader, Dr. Nye said their school district did not communicate well about how school would proceed. The district ended up offering only virtual school, with no plans for even hybrid learning in the future, leaving parents scrambling to plan.
Dr. Nye lucked out when her youngest child was accepted for a slot at a day camp offered through a partnership between the YMCA and UCSF. However, her eighth grader did not do well with distance learning in the spring, so having that virtual school as the only option has been difficult.
“Neither of the kids are doing really well in school,” she said. Her older one is overwhelmed by all the disparate online platforms and her youngest is having a hard time adjusting to differences like using a virtual pen. “The learning itself without question has suffered. You wonder about evaluation and this whole cohort of children in what will probably be more or less a lost year.”
Routines are the backbone of the family’s survival. “I think one of the most important things for kids in any stage of development is having a routine and being comfortable with that routine because that creates a sense of wellbeing in this time of uncertainty,” Dr. Nye said.
Neither Dr. Nye nor her husband, a geriatrician, have cut back on their work, so they are balancing a full plate of activities with parenting. Though their family is managing, “there are streaks of days where we’re like: ‘Are we failing our children?’ I’m sure every parent out there is asking themselves: ‘Am I doing enough?’” But she said, “We’re very, very lucky. We got that [camp] slot, we have the money to pay for it, and we both have flexible jobs.”
Rallying resources
Avital O’Glasser, MD, a hospitalist and associate professor of medicine at Oregon Health and Science University, Portland, fervently wished she could clone herself when the pandemic first started. Not only were her kids suddenly thrown into online classes, but she was pulled in to create a new service line for the COVID response at her clinic.
“The number of times that I said I think I need a time turner from Harry Potter. ... I felt that nothing was getting done even close to adequately because we were cutting corners left and right,” she said.
Thankfully, things have simmered down and Dr. O’Glasser is now working from home 5 or 6 days a week while her husband, a lawyer, goes to his job. “I think stress is lower now, but that’s in large part because, by the end of June, I really had to just stop and acknowledge how stressed I was and do a dramatic realignment of what I was doing for myself in terms of mental health support and bandwidth,” she said. Part of that involved realizing that the family needed a homeschool nanny for their 10-year-old and 7-year-old. “It’s been a lifesaver,” said Dr. O’Glasser.
Though life is on more of an even keel now, stress pops up in unexpected ways. “My youngest has pretty intense separation anxiety from me. Even with getting attention all day from our homeschool nanny, the day after I’m out of the house at the hospital, he really clings to me,” Dr. O’Glasser said. There’s sibling rivalry too, in an attempt to get parental attention.
Setting boundaries between work and home was her biggest challenge prepandemic, and that has not changed. “You’re trying to find that happy balance between professional development and family,” Dr. O’Glasser said. “Where do I cut corners? Do I try to multitask but spread myself thin? How do I say no to things? When am I going to find time to do laundry? When am I disconnecting? I think that now it’s facets of the same conundrum, but just manifested in different ways.”
She emphasized that parents should go easy on themselves right now. “A lot of parenting rules went out the window. My kids have had more screen time…and the amount of junk food they eat right now? Celebrate the wins.” Dr. O’Glasser chuckled about how her definition of a “win” has changed. “The bar now is something that I may never have considered a win before. Just seize those small moments. If my 7-year-old needs to do reading at my feet while I’m finishing notes from the day before, that’s okay,” she said.
How hospitalist groups can help
All four hospitalists had ideas about how hospitalist groups can help parents with school-age kids during the pandemic.
Providing child care at health care systems gives employees additional support, said Dr. Alla. Some of her friends have been unable to find child care because they are physicians who care for COVID patients and people do not want the extra risk. “I think any institution should think about this option because it’s very beneficial for an employee, especially for the long hours.”
Dr. Wray said he saw a program that matches up a hospitalist who has kids with one who does not in a type of buddy system, and they check in with each other. Then, if the parent has something come up, the other hospitalist can fill in and the parent can “pay it back” at another time. “This doesn’t put all the impetus on the schedule or on a single individual but spreads the risk out a little more and gives parents a bit of a parachute to make them feel like the system is supporting them,” he said.
“I would encourage groups to reach appropriate accommodations that are equitable and that don’t create discord because they’re perceived as unfair,” said Dr. O’Glasser. For instance, giving child care stipends, but limiting them to care at a licensed facility when some people might need to pay for a homeschool tutor. “Some of the policies that I saw seem to leave out the elementary school lot. You can’t just lump all kids together.”
Dr. Nye thought group leaders should take unseen pressures into account when evaluating employee performance. “I think we’re going to need to shift our yardstick because we can’t do everything now,” she said. “I’m talking about the extra things that people do that they’re evaluated on at the end of the year like volunteering for more shifts, sitting on committees, the things that likely aren’t in their job description. We’re going to have times when people are filling every last minute for their families. Face it with kindness and understanding and know that, in future years, things are going to go back to normal.”