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Hey everybody, welcome back. It's Jeanette Preston is on a little hiatus, so we have co hosting today. Mikayla Treynor, she is our Director of advancement and partnership. So anybody out there who wants to advertise with us, we're moving in that direction. Fall is a big time. We're hoping to finally get ourselves a little bit of money so she's your girl. Her emails on the website, so you can reach out to her if you want to do something like that, but she's going to co host today, and she has a topic in mind that she's been wanting to talk about, and I thought now was a good time for that. But before we do that topic, we've gotten a ton of new ratings and reviews, so I'm just going to read one from love my Katie did it says fabulous advocacy. It is so great to hear such wonderful work being done for our field, and so sad that it is not being done by the organization that pretends to be for us. Keep going. Fix SLP! Thanks. That was nice, but we all have to keep going, right? Mikayla, it's all of us. It's not just Fix SLP, doing the work. Yep. Keep chugging along. So, Mikayla, this is summer school, so we're on a timeline here. We like to actually keep these episodes short, but we've taken a few twists and turns this summer, so we're going to try to stick to the summer school topics today. What are we going to talk about?
I think it's the perfect time to talk about it. As many school SLPs are getting ready to head back, we're going to talk about burnout. So I feel like burnout is something that I wanted to talk about, because it seems to be an underlying theme, in a sense, especially for us SLPs, that have been in the field 510 years. And I mentioned this on the retreat, that I'm just seeing so many comments of SLPs burning out so much quicker. I'm seeing comments after like, three years, four years, and I am at a point in my career where I'm definitely feeling a level of burnout. And I'm going on 11 and a half years, I think, you know, it took me a while to get there, and I've worked in multiple settings, and it's just kind of sad to me how many SLPs are experiencing burnout and experiencing burnout a lot quicker.
So I want to frame this before we go any further, just so we're all on the same page with exactly what we're talking about. And the World Health Organization actually has a definition for burnout. They say it is a syndrome resulting from chronic, unmanaged workplace stress characterized by emotional exhaustion, increased mental distance from one's job, like cynicism or negativism, and reduced professional efficacy. This occupational phenomenon leads to feelings of energy depletion and detachment from one's work, resulting in decreased effectiveness in patient care or student education, and potential negative outcomes for both the clinician and the organization. So some factors that they say could contribute to burn out our high demand work environments, workload and inequity, lack of control, and then other systemic issues. And then there are consequences for us that are becoming burnout, increased rates of self reported medical errors or errors in documentation, a heightened risk of developing other conditions like compassion, fatigue and secondary traumatic stress, intrusive thoughts, insomnia, chronic irritability and impaired memory and an increased intention to leave one's job or even the profession. And I think a lot of us have found ourselves in this spot.
For sure, I know, being over a decade in now, I'm definitely starting to feel it. I've worked in a variety of settings, and I still am a workaholic, and I love what I do, and that's what makes it so complex, is I love the treatment. I love working with children and adults, but I'm definitely feeling some of that, I myself have noticed I really have to double check to make sure there's no typos. I am just feeling very emotionally fatigued at the end of the day, and I just started thinking about why, why is this and why is it happening now? And I held a can. Camp with Jordan Lee Van, the founder of the apraxia Foundation, we held a camp this summer for children with apraxia camp building empowered expression. And I had students come, and I really benefited from having them there. They were like a light to me, and so many of them had given me feedback after the fact via written and verbal that this was so great, and they want to be an SLP, like me. And it really melted my heart and filled my cup. And then I'm like, Man, I used to be that. SLP, I used to be that I used to be so excited about being a speech language pathologist. What happened to me? Because I just realized how much more drained I was seeing those students being so bubbly and excited. And, you know, I was thinking about it, and I've always kind of known it. But PT and OT, especially in the medical setting, they tend to have half the caseload that we have. And then, if you're working in a behavioral setting, a lot of those BCBAs, we as speech language pathologist have four to five times the caseload that they do, and I think that employers sometimes take for granted that that means I have four to five times the families to keep happy and keep up with and The clients to keep track of, even double. That's just one factor, that high caseload, that high demand, that really feeds into the exhaustion and fatigue.
There are a lot of systemic issues I think we can talk about. I have to wonder for you, this episode isn't necessarily about you and your story, but I know that I have struggled with burnout, but also I think for me, I get bored easily, so I think there is a fine line between boredom and burnout, where I have exhibited some of those things on the list that I just read a few minutes ago. And it's not necessarily that I was burnt out. It was that I was bored or I had very toxic colleagues that really made it so I needed to move away from this space. And when I look at the trajectory of my career, both clinically and in academia, other than the one job that I have done PRN for many years, which I'm always in a different building and moving around, I don't think I've kept a job for more than two years, which is nice, and I didn't really realize it until about a year ago when I got an ADHD diagnosis. It's just that I get under stimulated. So people, if they're considering if they're burnt out, need to consider, are you burnt out truly, or are you under stimulated? And is it time for a change of something? And that doesn't mean necessarily leaving jobs. Maybe you live in a big school district, you can move to a different school and change it up a little bit, or there's some other kind of opportunity that you could take. Or maybe you just need to add in a little PRN in a different setting. So we're not talking about that. I have to wonder, in your case, you've been doing the same thing for a really long time, things are changing for you. They're shifting. So 18 months ago, when we really met and started interacting, you had just started launching your own private practice. Now you're doing some IEP advocacy work, and you're working with parents and doing that in a different way, and you're fixing SLP, and I think you have found a couple of things that really light you up inside and bring joy to your life. And it has made you realize that there's a difference between doing work that fulfills me and fills me up and makes me so happy. And that other work that doesn't do that, and I do you think it's exacerbating the burnout for you,
For sure, I think that it was very kind of bittersweet timing when I launched Sandy speaks therapy in honor of my late mother. I had the best of intentions of I'm going to market myself, and then, literally, a couple months later, Fix SLP came in my life, and then fighting for my voice came in my life. And I'm very thankful, and I wouldn't change it for the world, but doing. Three new things all at once, was a lot, and I still have a full time job, and I do PRN, so I probably work too much, but I also very likely have ADHD, and I like to multitask. I suppose I like to keep busy. I love what I do, but I think that between working for myself a little bit, fighting for my voice and fix, SLP, I'm just realizing the lack of support that can come from a variety of jobs. You know, speaking of like skilled nursing or hospital settings, we're often talking about productivity. Even outpatient settings oftentimes have productivity standards, and that's draining. You know? I think I figured it out if I went, say, to see one patient for 30 minutes, I think to be 92% productive, or something like that, that gives me three minutes, and that's enough time to walk back and, you know, log in and do a quality note, it's just not and I was, prior to that, on a covid ventilator unit as a director, and I think that it was just kind of, you know, one thing after another. And again, I'm very thankful for the way that it's played out, but I'm realizing we don't have the support from the top down. And when we kind of relate this back to ASHA, when I think of what little resources we have and the changes that we've been able to make in, like you said, a short amount of time. It hasn't even been two years since I've been part of the team. Esha has so many resources, and I feel like the power that they could have to really make meaningful change, to really, truly advocate for caseload caps and lower productivity standards. Those standards are always increasing, and we're not getting the support from the top down to kind of help us stand up for ourselves and be like, No, this isn't right, and really help decrease that burnout, because there's all these Facebook groups for SLPs leaving the field, and the amount, the numbers in those groups, we're talking 1000s of SLPs that are leaving. And, you know, the thought has crossed my mind too, it's like, I love what I do, but I'm tired. I'm tired, and I am finding things that definitely fill my cup in that process. And I love my clients, but it's hard when there's all these other factors, like productivity, high caseload caps. I don't know about you, but in medical settings, especially, I've been considered the scapegoat, I feel like, for things where it's like, speech gets blamed for some things, and it's like, how did this happen?
Yeah, so I want to point something out, just to our listeners, that if you take a look at the number of working SLPs in this country, and then you take a look at the number of ASHA CCC holders and members, it is at minimum, 50,000 people are paying for the CCC who are not working. That's at minimum. That's a low estimate. When you do that math, per year, that's $12,500,000.
That's wild.
Yeah, that's $12.5 million a year that ASHA is bringing in for no reason. And then if you start thinking about if those people are using the CEU tracker or paying for the learning pass to keep up their CEUs. How much more revenue are they making? On top of that, off of people who aren't actually working in the field. And what we hear from people is, well, we're keeping it for insurance in case we want to go back someday. What I just wanted to point that out to people that we're so afraid of the Praxis that we're paying ASHA $12.5 million a year so people don't have to retake praxis. Okay, back to burnout. So your story, you're feeling burnout. How have you seen that impact your life?
I think that I am chronically exhausted now, and I do have. Fibromyalgia. I have been diagnosed with that, which is a chronic pain and fatigue disorder, syndrome, I guess. And I have always felt like fatigue was like the biggest contributor. I've been very fortunate that I'm not in a ton of pain. I do have moments, but in general, I'm tired, but I feel like later in my career now, I'm really noticing that mental exhaustion more I feel like I myself am experiencing brain fog. So there are times where I feel like I'm using my own cognitive strategies on myself, and I always joke like I'm so busy remembering everybody else's stuff, like in the nursing home, and you know, we're working on memories, so I'm remembering all their family members names and that I'm forgetting my own things, and I'm like, Oh, I have to dial it back. And I've really tried, even though I'm a workaholic, to incorporate more self care for myself. I've started saying no to PRN, even though I'm a pretty consistent PRN, I've started taking some weekends off just because I recognize that I am now feeling it over a decade in. And I think, you know, I was probably one of the lucky ones nowadays that I didn't feel it three or four years in. And it's just really sad to me that I still consider that a pretty new SLP, that they're at that level where they're saying, I'm burned out, and they're looking at alternative careers. It's just you went to school for this, and you, at one point, loved it. And it's just really heartbreaking to me that there isn't more being done. And I don't have all the answers on how to fix this, but I feel like it does come with advocacy. I feel like that is at least the start more people saying no, like these productivity standards are not ethical. Having conversations with employers that I'm seeing 30 children and my counterparts are only seeing 12, but we're held to that same expectation, so it starts with conversations, but then the hope is that it leads to action.
Yeah, that is something that we like to do, and neither one of us have all of the answers, but we do have some ideas. Those ideas do not include crying in your car. You can always call our minivan belt online if you need to do something like that. But we have some ideas and things that have worked for us, or things that we'd love to be able to do, but just can't get there quite yet. The first one was, what you just said was to set those boundaries on your workload or your caseload. First of all, we've talked about this a lot on this podcast over the last two years, but learn to set those boundaries and say no, 100% do not do paperwork off the clock. Everything is on the clock. And if you need to go back to those episodes where we talk about how employers steal from you, go listen to those episodes. There are, and have been multiple lawsuits where clinicians have come together, OT, PT and st to sue their employers for wage theft, and that starts with productivity. I feel like anything over 85 looks like it can be won in court. So any job that's requiring over 85% productivity, those cases are winning, from what I can tell. So don't work off the clock. Say no to unpaid duties. If you're in a school, no to bus duty. You know no to to recess those kinds of things. Saying no to excessive paperwork is sort of a form of professional self preservation. Just make sure these people know if I do this, I will be paid period, the people who are afraid to lose their job or to be reprimanded, or who just sit back and do it because they want to be team players, those are the clinicians that keep this cycle going, whether they mean to or not, but they're not helping the rest of us who are trying to make significant change. And if you're young and you're saying yes to these things because you are afraid, just consider where you're going to be, 1015, 2030, years in, you might not be burnt out today, but it's coming, so setting these boundaries now so it doesn't come, and so we can fight this fight for you, and with you is important. The next one, Mikayla, I'm not very good at, is recovery time. How are how are you with recovery time?
Horrible.
Real rest. Who knows that? Real rest? Real. Us, we should say that Mikayla is not currently in any type of serious, committed relationship, and she doesn't have kids, so she ticked off all of those things that she does. She can do that because she's she's not chasing tiny children around the house. She's a cat mom, but we're all in different places, and we all have different responsibilities. For me, I have two kids, but I also have a mom and a brother, both with pretty serious neurological conditions. Neither of them can drive right now, so I'm taking care of my family. I'm married. I've got Fix SLP, I still have to help pay the bills, so I might not be working the kinds of hours that you are, but man, am I maxed, right? I am max. So time for like, sleep, rest, hobbies, movement, social, connection, those aren't optional. This is a kind of like, do as I say, not as I do, but I did really try to prioritize. Now, Mikayla has fibromyalgia. I've never said I don't think I've ever said this on on the podcast. I have a pretty rare mold illness that impacts my life in a lot of really, really, really bizarre ways. I went to an Italian festival. Girl, you know, I was living my best life, right? I said no to the wine because I knew, like food gives me problems. I thought I did okay. I woke up yesterday and I was in so much pain, I was so inflamed that I cried when my feet hit the ground and I tried to walk. So I told my husband, I'm not someone who slows down. But I told him, my body is telling me that I need to stop moving, and that's exactly how a doctor kind of described it to me too. This, this is so complicated, and there's so many layers, but I we have an infrared sauna. I did. I took some detox supplements, let those hit my system a little bit. I came and, you know, tried to sweat some of that out. I laid in bed for a little while. I did some light movement, and it drove me crazy. So even when that like rest, that real rest comes, I'm not good at it. I have to be doing it's not that my mind is running or it's bothering me. I'm just a doer. I don't like to be still for long, and that's that's probably the ADHD too, but I'm not good at it. I'm not so that's an area I think of improvement for both of us.
Yeah, for sure, I think that we all have so much going on. I know this year has been a hard year for me, too, as well with family, and then we have some health things going on, and I think that that speaks for every SLP, you know, people don't know what we're going through, and we can have, quote, unquote, like a united front, and everything's good, and we're going into work and, you know, our co workers don't know what's going on, or our clients don't know, and we are just trying to have this tough front of everything's okay, everything's okay. And I think that that really feeds into the cycle of burnout as well. It's almost like we're suppressing some of this. I think I work a lot to keep myself busy too, because when I'm moving more, I feel better in general. But even when I'm working that much, another strategy that might help kind of decrease that burnout level is micro breaks. So I have tried to get a little bit better about this, as far as taking even two minutes to get up do some deep breathing or stretch, or maybe do a quick lap around your building or something outside, if the weather is nice.
Yeah. that's a goal for myself. This fall my kids go back to school. When this drops, it'll be tomorrow. My kids go back to school tomorrow, and as I think about my fall schedule and what that's going to look like, I'm going to try to build in three micro breaks a day of 10 minutes of just walking around my neighborhood, and then I need to get back to some movement, and movement just for me. So that's my goal. Is maybe not two minutes every hour or whatever, because also hyper focus. If you know, you know, another thing that I do, Mikayla, and I know you do too, is we both go to therapy. And mine's not necessarily for like, this major trauma, but sometimes my therapist is like, Are you sure you want to keep coming every week, I always tell her, yeah, it's a good place for me to go and just get it out. And then, you know, sometimes she can challenge me in ways to, like, think about how I can do things differently or improve things for myself. So I I have found that to be really helpful.
I love my therapist. I've been with her now for four years, and I tell her she can never discharge me. Similar to you Jeanette, like I mean, I've had some heavy things over those four years that I've discussed with her. But it is, it's good for me. I out of everything, I really think for me, personally, having a therapist has been the best stress reliever for me and outlet. And you know, it's just no judgment. I can tell her all my complaints about whatever, including the speech world. And she's probably like speech world out with me, but you know, it's that non biased outlet. Just okay, this is yes, what I have to do. I have to word vomit all over you. And typically I tell her, I'm like, I'm going to talk for like 20 minutes. And she's like, go. Then she really helps me reframe my thoughts. I fully support some good old talk therapy,
Yeah, and I love going in person, too. I don't like doing it online. I go and I, I literally sit on a couch. That's, that's my preference is to go in person and be there and be focused.
And I'm virtual, So either way!
Those examples we gave are some examples to help you protect your energy. We have a couple more lists, and I don't know that we're going to have time to get through all of them, so maybe we'll fly through a couple of these fast. But the next list that we have is reframing the work. And so one of the things that I've tried to do a little more for our Fix SLP team is focus on wins. So you, as a clinician can focus on your patient wins, or as a professor, every time a student wrote me a nice card or a nice little note or gave me a little gift or something, I had a bulletin board that I could see. It wasn't necessarily displayed to my entire office, but it was on the side of a cabinet where I could see it that I would just pin those up there, and I didn't take them down and read them, but I they helped remind me that I was doing good and important work. And for the Fix SLP team, I have been trying to get better about sending them screenshots of when you guys reach out to tell us how much you appreciate us, or how important our work has been to you, or the change that it has made in your life, because I get to see all of those, and those are very useful in helping to keep us motivated, but the rest of the team doesn't get to see them, and I forget that, but that's a good way that when you're feeling drained and you're looking at those milestones with your patients or your students or your clients, it kind of helps reinvigorate you a little bit. You want to give one or two more. Mikayla?
Another good one is some good old peer connection, which I feel like Fix SLP, has been a really great thing for me to feel that connection again with other SLPs, and especially as I feel like I am experiencing a bit of burnout now. And like I said, I was fortunate that this is just now happening to me, but it really helps to have other SLPs being like, oh, yeah, I went through that too. Yeah, I'm going through it. Sometimes you just need to vent. Just need to get it out. Other times, like we're trying to do a little bit now of, yeah, venting, but also brainstorming some ideas to get you out of that so you're not feeling like this is this doom and gloom hole, and you're feeling isolated. So I think connecting with other SLPs and doesn't even need to be SLPs coworkers, whoever you consider a peer, a safe peer to vent with. I think that that really helps.
Yeah, and then just keep learning on your terms, you know, pursue CEUs or mentorship or something in an area that you love, rather than what you think you have to do. In a lot of states, it's wide open for you to take any CEU or professional development hour that relates to the field, you can and if you still have the CCC, ASHA doesn't require their own ASHA approved CEUs to maintain the CCC. It's anything that's related. Now, a lot of people stick with that, because you can report ASHA approved CEUs to the tracker. That's how they keep their money in their bank, right? They just keep pulling in all this money. But you don't have to use that. You can track those on your own. And so if there's only 20 hours in your tracker for ASHA, you can still. A test that you did the other 10. And then if you get audited, you just send in your certificate. So you have to track those hang on to that stuff, but you can do whatever you want. So find those things that invigorate you, that you have a lot of interest in, that get you excited, and that could help too. And then I just want to wrap up with system level pushback, and that's the kind of thing that we do. It's advocating for caseload or workload models, educating your employers, pushing back against unnecessary requirements, knowing your rights. We're pushing back in all of those areas, or we're supporting people who are and we do have ideas, and as more and more and more and more of you reach out to us and connect and join our state teams, we're finding and learning more, and we're finding people that we can connect with other people. So system level pushback, we have state teams. We have many lists of state teams. For those of you who are waiting to hear from us, please continue to be patient. I am the one who is doing a lot of that work. We had somebody on the team who was helping to organize that who had to step back. Mikayla was doing some of that work, and I asked her to step back from that. So it's coming. I think once my kids are back in school, I can definitely do more. It's been a tough summer, so if you're interested, states@fixslp.com there's a lot of work to be done, and we don't have all the answers, but we want to come beside you, so pushing back against that system so you can have an easier work experience is important for you and for the people who are coming after you. And sometimes, I think what Mikayla and I have found is that giving back in a way like that, where you can make a difference really goes a long way. And when you get those wins, you're like, Yes, this is what I was meant for, right? So I don't know, Mikayla, you want to jump in on that before we wrap up?
Yeah, for sure, I was definitely an emotional mess at the end of camp b this year, and I did not expect to be that way. I kept telling parents like, all right, I'm going to keep it together. And then I'd start to cry. And I needed that though it was just it was very rewarding to have so much positive feedback from parents, from students who are going to become SLPs, from campers themselves. I really needed that, and I did not realize how badly I needed that interaction. So I fully agree that you should reach out. Reach out if you're feeling the burnout, that's the big thing. Reach out to peers, co workers. Reach out to a therapist. Reach out to someone going through it, who or maybe went through it, or a professional, just someone to get it off your chest, because you're not alone in that, and there hopefully is a way out of it, other than leaving the field, even though, you know, I respect anybody who made that decision to leave the field, because you have to ultimately do what is best for you. But hopefully we've given you some strategies other than crying in your car and attempting to manage 120 plus caseload in the schools, so something tangible that you can take back and be like, All right, I'm going to take it back with me today that three times I'm going to stop and I'm going to take three deep breaths. It can be as simple as that, but it's a start.
Yeah, love that. All right. Mikayla, I think we could keep talking, but we've got to cut it off. I'm already worried about how I'm gonna cut this down. Thanks for jumping in and filling in for Preston while he takes his little man hiatus. We love him. We can't wait to have him back. Who knows what's coming next week? I stopped planning. In the meantime, all of you school SLPs have been going back, who are back this week, who are back next week, who first day's coming up. Good luck this year. We're rooting for you, and thanks for fixing it, guys. We'll see you next week.
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