How To Deal With Stress

We all know what stress is, and we are very lucky indeed if we never experience it. Exams cause stress. The prospect of medical or dental school interviews causes stress. Revising for UCAT causes stress. Wondering whether you have enough money to fund your way through university causes stress.

One of the best ways of dealing with stress is to have a healthy work-life balance. Counter-intuitive as it might seem, leaving the coursework you need to get finished in order to take your family dog for a walk, or whatever it might be that you like to do, can be a really good way of re-setting your mind, so that you come back to your coursework refreshed. Regular participation in team sports, and making sure you find time to see friends are also really good ways of keeping stress at bay, or at least in context.

Stress is a feature of life, but there are many situations in medicine where you are likely to have to cope with what can sometimes be an unhealthy amount of stress, both as an individual and as part of a team.

In medicine, stress can be mitigated using the PDP method: Preparation, Delegation and Prioritisation, and many of the principles used can be applied more generally.

Preparation involves anticipating issues and planning to ensure that risk is minimised.

• Examples include ensuring adequate resources for a task, learning about a task in advance so you don’t have to learn about it on the day, or it may simply be making sure you have enough rest, acknowledging that your body has limitations beyond which it does not function well.

Delegation involves devolving tasks appropriately to trained members of the team.

• In the non-medical setting, this can involve things such as ensuring that it’s not always you that organises the school football matches or the swimming league. Or, if you’re a prefect at school, that it’s not always you who does the lunchtime duty or reports to the Head of Year.

Prioritisation requires an understanding of both the tasks that need to be completed and the timeline in which each individual task must be done.

• Prioritisation is a dynamic activity, and is an essential skill to develop, as doing it successfully can significantly decrease stress levels.

Because of the fact that you are bound to experience stress from time to time in your medical career, questions around it can form part of admissions interviews.

What sort of things might you talk about when responding to interview questions concerning stress?

• I try to respond to the facts of the situation rather than to stress of the situation. That way, I can handle the situation without becoming too stressed. For example, when I deal with an unsatisfied customer in my weekend job, I focus on trying to sort out the task at hand, rather than just becoming stressed.
• My Duke of Edinburgh Award training has really helped me learn to communicate effectively with people in teams, and being able to communicate clearly helps reduce my own stress and also helps reduces the stress of other members of the team.
• As Captain of my school team / leader of the school orchestra / school prefect, etc., I’ve learned to be sensitive to the nuances of group dynamics. If there’s an unhealthy amount of stress within a team, I can feel some of that stress. So, I try to listen proactively to the concerns of the people around me, checking in frequently to see whether they are under stress. If they are, I think about how I can help them with their workload/responsibilities, so the collective stress of the team doesn’t escalate. When the team’s happy, I’m happy.

But, of course, if you’re applying to medical or dental school, then the interview itself can be a stressful experience!

Q: How do I reduce my interview stress levels?
A: Prepare and be prepared.

• Be sure to research the university course in advance. Know what it is you are being interviewed for!
• Know exactly where you need to go for your interview and work out how you are going to get there.
• Make sure you build slack into your travel time in case your train has been cancelled or there has been an accident on the motorway. Nothing increases interview stress more than running late and worrying you are going to miss your allocated time!
• Practice answering common interview questions. The more you practice, the more comfortable you’ll feel in the interview.
• Avoid negative thinking (“I won’t get this”). Instead, visualise success in the interview (for example, envisage having positive interactions with the interviewer). Do this right before the interview.
• Use relaxation techniques. If you start to feel stressed just before the interview, try taking a deep breath or two to relax. This may help invoke the parasympathetic response.
• During the interview, take a breath in if you are very stressed. This gives you time to compose yourself and prepare your answer.
• Watch your body language and avoid fidgeting. Your body language not only helps convey that you’re relaxed, but it can actually help you feel relaxed. Appearing calm and confident, you are more likely to feel calm and confident.
• Finally, remember that your interviewers want you to be relaxed so that you can give your best. They’re on your side and want you to do well. It can help to remember that your interviewers were themselves once interviewed for a place at medical or dental school – just like you!