How to achieve work-life balance?
I’m about a year out into practice as a DVM and have been at my current clinic a little over 6 months.
It may be my generation, or neurodivergence, but I really don’t like overworking myself and do not live to work. Forty hour work weeks is already a lot to me and likely at the upper end of my limit or past it for my ideal working time to be efficient and not burnt out.
I see on average probably 15-18 cases a day. I’m drowning in paperwork constantly, can’t keep up with callbacks on labs very well, have given up entirely on check in callbacks in the majority of my cases because I just don’t have the time, work through most of my lunch on paperwork, and have to work at home a lot. We have AI note software which helps but is not enough. I’m ADHD and live in a constant state of anxiety that I’m forgetting something because I almost always am. Also am slower and have more trouble than others at switching tasks or going back and forth so I’m probably less productive. My patience is extremely low for entitled clients that call last minute for things and demand service now and expect me to drop everything. We have a lot of older clientele and this is a trend I notice with them.
I also get intense dread and anxiety when I’m contacted outside of work for work related things. I need to set a boundary but don’t expect it to be taken very well. I appreciate and like my colleagues a lot and their reasons for reaching out are valid but seriously ruin my day when I’m trying to disconnect.
Realistically, I need better boundaries, lower case load and more time on the clock to do notes but that cuts into clinic production so I’m not sure how to propose it to management. In my ideal workplace, I would have no notes or comms to do outside of work hours and could actually completely disconnect during my lunch. Is this unrealistic? How do I make this my reality before deciding I’m not cut out to be a full-time DVM?