5 ways to keep political stress out of your medical practice

Most of the political tension inside a medical practice never gets spoken out loud. It walks in with the staff. A nine-week study of 308 full-time U.S. workers published in Computers in Human Behavior found that the political news, podcasts and social media employees take in on their own time show up at work the next day as anxiety, thinner engagement and less willingness to help a co-worker.

The team was led by Ian Hughes, an assistant professor of psychological and brain sciences at Texas A&M University, and surveyed workers every week through the 2024 presidential primary season. In weeks when employees took in more political information than usual and read it as negative, they reported higher anxiety, and that anxiety tracked with lower engagement, a measure of energy and investment in the job. In weeks when the information landed as positive, they reported more hope, stronger engagement and more helping behavior toward co-workers, according to the university.

“Political information is designed to capture attention and provoke emotional reactions,” Hughes said. Those reactions, the researchers found, do not switch off when the app closes. Rather than treating political content as something that stays home, Hughes said employers may need to recognize that employees arrive already carrying concerns generated somewhere else.

In a small practice, that arrives in tight quarters. A front desk absorbs it, a medical assistant carries it into the exam room and a five-person team feels one person’s bad week. A New York Times/Siena College poll found 64 percent of voters believe the country is too polarized to solve its problems, and many said they steer clear of colleagues and friends who disagree with them. The job for practice leaders is not to referee anyone’s politics. It is to keep the spillover from landing on patients and on each other.

Here are five ways to keep political stress from disrupting your medical practice.