“If self-care was important before the pandemic, it has become almost essential in everybody's life today,” says Usha Peri, MD, who is a DaVita medical council member and a SKY breath meditation instructor for the Art of Living Foundation. Listen to this podcast, in which Ryan Weir interviews Dr. Peri on self-care, with a focus on self-care for clinicians and during the pandemic. Dr. Peri discusses what burnout is and how to counteract it, what self-care means to her, how she became interested in the SKY breath meditation technique and why she became an instructor, and what tools she uses to help with her own self-care. During the podcast, she also demonstrates a couple breathing exercises that one can do in less than 5 minutes during a break in the day to unwind and reset before going back to work.
Podcast Transcript:
Ryan (00:40): Hello and welcome to the DaVita Medical Insights podcast. I'm your host Ryan. We're joined on the phone today by Dr. Usha Peri. Dr. Peri is on the medical council of DaVita and is a SKY breath meditation instructor for the Art of Living Foundation. Dr. Peri, how are you doing today?
Dr. Usha Peri (00:57 (https://www.rev.com/transcript-editor/Edit?token=dmIS-z3JwjDPaGfg5lFn6hEAb-cu7QuI_lfNQWa6n0IPi6DN5khw__HRYhXBXdIUVOD0cjQwFd4JhKNDjUlpPbEK-6k&loadFrom=DocumentDeeplink&ts=57.78)): Great. Thanks, Ryan.
Ryan (00:59 (https://www.rev.com/transcript-editor/Edit?token=5Evf7MpydCPc7jkGU4TFn_-AyCMd8ALD8C131w7yeYV8Kg1jR14y1TiPPMJMV0bA4WM4hJfjNSXdRTNuipDywJTsQLM&loadFrom=DocumentDeeplink&ts=59.32)): All right. Dr. Peri, we're talking about self-care today and as we all know, there's a pandemic going on. So can you talk about the timing of this topic and why self-care for clinicians is so relevant right now?
Dr. Usha Peri (01:11 (https://www.rev.com/transcript-editor/Edit?token=ZHj0pM3_JfX_Qx-uWbCe1OIV99xqZbNsD-Pjp6e6BekWvUAT8g40Pt1PSjV1EHYa131q_yekgc0MuPgMviaTakHciA8&loadFrom=DocumentDeeplink&ts=71.43)): Absolutely. Even before the pandemic physicians' burnout rates and health care professionals' burnout rates have been on the rise. Even though this word was coined back in the '70s, it has started becoming much more relevant recently with the rise of regulatory burden, as well as electronic health documentation burden that's being placed on the physician. Now, with the pandemic hitting, all of this has just gone exponentially high. Things are changing quite rapidly and they're asked to keep up with all the changes. As you know, regulations are changing, by the day, sometimes, and our telehealth visits, all of us had to transition to telehealth almost overnight. And the documentation rules around that keep changing as well. At the same time, our patients are also in this uncertain, anxious time. And so their demands on the health care professionals are higher and our ability to deal with the death and the grieving process, all of this is taking a huge toll on the health care professionals. If self-care was important before the pandemic, it has become almost essential in everybody's life today.
Ryan (02:42 (https://www.rev.com/transcript-editor/Edit?token=CzVbemhvQvwZefsiK1g2Bmg1VppI2Kv0rEI87IkqkWf9Yng2zPlp4TdwYWQ9yvNNGSb-dWmM_VtlSzA0TksEZbxJp0E&loadFrom=DocumentDeeplink&ts=162.4)): Yeah.
