Jordyn Feingold, a third-year medical student, left, and Benny Laitman, MD, PhD, an Otolaryngology resident
Mount Sinai has released the sixth episode of the monthly podcast series Road To Resilience, which details how reframing stressful thoughts, playing to your strengths, and prioritizing your well-being can help you overcome stress and anxiety. In this podcast, Benny Laitman, MD, PhD, an Otolaryngology resident, and Jordyn Feingold, a third-year medical student at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, explain how they use these resilience factors to cope with the stress they face every day as they explore their new world of medicine.
In the episode, “Managing Stress, Anxiety, and Fear,” Dr. Laitman talks about what it was like to feel stress on a daily basis when starting his residency. He explains how he copes with the pressure of being responsible for patients’ well-being for the first time in his life and performing his first surgeries—even with a rigorous schedule and as he and his spouse prepare for a new baby. Dr. Laitman talks about how he uses resilience to directly face these challenges instead of avoiding them.
“We see a lot of clinic patients, and I can look down the list and see which patients I want to take. For example, I can take the easy cases, like a patient who needs an ear wax cleaning, or I can take the one who needs a cancer workup. I need to deal with the discomfort,” says Dr. Laitman. “Every time you do that, you learn more, you feel less uncomfortable. You feel more confident, and you know how to approach it in the future. You’re supposed to be uncomfortable because that’s how we grow…If you don’t feel uncomfortable you’re probably not learning, you’re probably avoiding things that will make you better.”
Ms. Feingold addresses the issue of student burnout. She details what it’s like to feel immense pressure to succeed while in medical school while tackling a difficult course load. She explains how she uses positive psychology to deal with the stress and anxiety. Additionally she has taken unique steps to build resilience among her fellow students and leads courses on this at the School of Medicine to train and prepare them for challenges. She also emphasizes the importance of prioritizing your well-being, and how this has helped her persevere in times of stress.
“I have to practice self-care. One of the best things I’ve done is subscribing to workout classes…It gets me out of my own routine and doing things outside of my comfort zone. For 45 minutes when you’re in that space, you can’t think about the stress. You leave feeling renewed and ready to go on with your day,” Feingold says. “This is something I tell all of my friends both in and outside of medical school, even my patients and families going through hard times… We have to take care of ourselves so we are as equipped as possible to take care of other people.”
The “Road to Resilience” podcast is based on the well-received book Resilience: The Science of Mastering Life’s Greatest Challenges, co-authored by Dennis S. Charney, MD, Anne and Joel Ehrenkranz Dean of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, and Steven Southwick, MD, Professor of Psychiatry at Yale University. It features thought-provoking insight from renowned experts as they explain the science behind resilience. The work has been so well received the book now has a second edition.
The book identifies 10 resilience factors to help anyone become stronger when facing life’s greatest challenges and they explain how these can be learned at any stage of life. Each podcast episode focuses on different factors including having optimism, a support system, and role models, along with physical and brain fitness. The monthly series features insight from different Mount Sinai experts as they explain the science behind resilience while sharing their personal stories and experiences.
Road to Resilience is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and Google Play (link works best in Chrome). New episodes of the series are released on the last Wednesday of each month. You can find more information on the Icahn School of Medicine website or on the Road to Resilience website.