Tips on Dealing With Stress From an IT Exec Who Has Been to Breakdown and Back
Thu, May 01, 2003
CIO — There is a great scene in the 1990 movie Days of Thunder. Tom Cruise is a race car driver screaming around a racetrack in a noisy blur of smoke and color. Coming into a straightaway, he puts his foot right to the floor. The car roars, the tachometer leaps up into the red, and the engine promptly explodes. The car loses all speed and limps to the side of the track, useless. Cruise had pushed it too far, and as a consequence, it died.
Unfortunately, many executives in the business world have also got their foot to the floor, unaware that burnout lies just around the corner. The consequences can be disastrous and costly, not only for the individual but also for the company.
I should know. For more than 25 years, I believed I could accomplish just about anything professionally. And I often did. Following medical school, I enjoyed 15 years of practice before accepting a senior leadership role in PeaceHealth, a nonprofit health-care organization in the Pacific Northwest. My job quickly grew until I had responsibility for corporatewide clinical quality and all information technology initiatives. In 1994, PeaceHealth launched an aggressive campaign to implement an advanced IT infrastructure supporting both operations and clinical care. The centerpiece of the effort was our Community Health Record project, a network of communitywide medical records designed to support patient care in each of the communities we serve.
Little did I know how difficult this role would prove to be. Resistance was monumental and seemed to come from everywhere in the organization?from skeptical board members and executives to hostile physicians. My workday typically began by 6 a.m., when I would send e-mails and return voice messages from home. Arriving at the office before 7:30 a.m., my days were characterized by a blur of conference calls, tense meetings and voluminous e-mail exchanges. Around 7 p.m., I would stagger out of the office to catch a quick meal with my wife, before heading to my home office where I would continue working until 10 or 11 p.m. My four sons grew accustomed to not seeing their dad even on the weekends.
Despite the resistance, with the staunch support of my CEO, we literally moved mountains. In roughly four years, PeaceHealth went from virtually no automation to a highly advanced infrastructure including a full-blown electronic medical records system supporting care in all of our hospitals and clinics with nearly everything online.
