Advice(part 6)

Take Your Own Advice

Healthcare workers give some of the best advice—and follow the least of it.

As healthcare providers, we sit across from people every day and tell them what they should do, what they shouldn’t do, what they should eat, what they shouldn’t drink, what meds they need to take, and what lifestyle changes they really need to make. We say it with confidence. We say it because we know it’s true. And then we go right back to doing the exact opposite.

I was talking with a patient the other day who was dealing with some psychological issues. We were talking about medications, and she told me she had been prescribed some but stopped taking them because she didn’t like how they made her feel. Instead of lecturing her, I told her the truth. I told her I’m on my third psych medication. The first two did absolutely nothing for me. I told her that meds aren’t one-size-fits-all and that sometimes it takes a few tries to find the right one. I encouraged her to talk to her PCP and see if something else might work better. We also talked about sleep aids. Melatonin came up. I told her that some people do great on it, and some people don’t. I’m one of the people who can’t take it because it gives me nightmares. My wife takes it with no issues at all. Same supplement, two very different results. Then we talked about therapy. I told her therapy isn’t taboo. It isn’t just for “crazy” people. Sometimes there’s an underlying issue that meds alone won’t fix, and talking to someone actually helps.

That whole conversation got me thinking about how often we tell people exactly what they need to do… while completely ignoring that same advice in our own lives.

I spent a long time in denial about my blood pressure. I warned patients over and over about the dangers of uncontrolled hypertension. Stroke. Heart attack. Kidney damage. All of it. And there I was, doing the same thing they were doing—ignoring it, minimizing it, convincing myself I’d deal with it later.

Sleep is another big one. We tell people how important sleep is. We tell them that lack of sleep wrecks the body, affects memory, slows reaction time, and causes real health problems. Then we turn around and stay up for countless hours straight. When we do get sleep, it’s broken, shallow, and restless. And somehow, we’re still expected to perform at our absolute best.

Hydration is another lie we love to tell ourselves. We tell patients they need more water and electrolytes. Meanwhile, we live on coffee, soda, tea, and energy drinks. We jack up our heart rates, mess with our sleep even more, crash hard, and pretend it’s normal. Who knows what kind of long-term damage we’re doing to ourselves, but we brush it off because “that’s just the job.”

We tell patients to follow up with their doctor, but half of us don’t even have a PCP. We tell people not to ignore symptoms while we ignore our own aches, pains, anxiety, and warning signs. We tell people mental health matters while quietly worrying about what would happen if we actually admitted we were struggling. Somewhere along the way, we convinced ourselves that the rules don’t apply to us. That we can push through anything. We’ll deal with it later. That other people need help more than we do.

That mindset works on the scene.
It does real damage off-scene.

We know better. We teach better. We explain prevention, early intervention, and lifestyle changes every single day. We warn people about what happens when problems are ignored, when sleep is skipped, when blood pressure goes untreated, when mental health gets brushed aside. And then we go right back to doing it all ourselves. We don’t lack knowledge. We don’t lack experience. We don’t even lack proof — we see the outcomes every shift. What we lack is follow-through.

We preach prevention, then work ourselves straight into the very diagnoses we warn about.