The Upside of a Lockdown
When we look back at our careers in the years to come, several milestones will inevitably come to mind. You’ll talk about the patient who was so grateful for your help. You’ll embarrassingly recall the time you started treating the wrong side and for the patient to not say a word until the end of the appointment. You describe the day you questioned your life choices as you stood pitch-side on a cold, wet and windy winter’s day unable to feel your hands. Undoubtedly, we will also have our COVID lockdown stories to add to our career ‘highlights’. I anticipate that your lockdown story will follow the template of: the fear, anxiety, and insecurity brought by 2020, the optimism that 2021 promised followed by the fear, anxiety, and insecurity that 2021 delivered.
As we Victorians enter our second week of our fourth lockdown and the COVID variants make us review our Greek alphabet (is it eta, zeta then theta or zeta, eta then theta?), I sat down to consider what positives us Physios can we take from this lockdown. However, I don’t want you to think that I am an eternal optimist, and we should be positive. My default position is that lockdowns are the worst. Like sand after a visit to the beach, lockdowns creep into every corner of your existence.
Nevertheless, I will put a positive spin and look at the possible upsides of a lockdown.
Reflect on the change of pace.
With the current measures in place the clinic has become quieter. Appointments and group sessions have been postponed, new patients are holding off from booking in and telehealth hasn’t stepped in like a stunt double to get the job done.
The first lockdown was filled with a sense of needing to fill the time with projects, to do and create more. Thankfully, that hasn’t been the case this time around. Things are calmer. I am calmer. My attitude has been more sipping on an expensive whiskey in a fancy glass with my legs crossed than skulling a pre-mixed bourbon and cola asking for the Ja-Rule track to be turned up loader.
I’m not going to say this new pace is better, just different. Perhaps with more whiskey sipping time, new thoughts and ideas will come to mind. I’ll do things differently and see the world differently. That can’t be a bad thing.
Go Outside and move
With more time at hand, particularly in winter, having more time to visit the great outdoors is a luxury. On a recent trip out of Melbourne my wife and I did some star-gazing. Admiring our skill of locating the Southern Cross, Orion’s belt and the moon, we recalled being told about the Inca culture of Peru using the dark spaces in the night sky to create their ‘constellations’. They looked beyond the bright stars for another story being told in the dark space.
Lockdowns inevitably inflict us with empty appointment slots. Perhaps we can alter our perception and see the empty space as a short term positive. For each empty appointment slot becomes a moment in the day to go outside, take in some fresh air and the fleeting winter sun.
Perhaps this lack of outdoor time in our usual winter work hours is why so many of us happily stand pitch-side each winter chasing those few precious moments of winter’s sun?
Reach out to colleagues
I have never enjoyed working on my own. Too many laughs are lost when you are own your own. Lockdowns are tough on everyone, but in a different way. So, reach out, see how your colleagues are doing. Chances are you’ll feel better yourself for just having a chat.
So take them out for a walk, organise a zoom wine catch up, send them a funny meme. It all helps us stay connected. It helps us through these tough times.
Catch up on notes
On a recent survey conducted on one 42 year old Physiotherapist who wrote this blog, it was found that 73% of work stress can be attributed to the time pressure of maintaining thorough, accurate and coherent notes. The other 27% of stress came from a combination of forgetting patient’s names and hand injuries.
Use the time to get on top of your notes, letters and also simply reaching out to patients you’ve lost contact with over the previous weeks. Patients always appreciate a simple call or email asking how they’re going.
So perhaps there is a (small) upside to a lockdown.
