How do you prevent stress from your personal life from entering your professional life and vice-versa?

"When I have a healthy balance in my personal life, I am much better at handling work-related stress. I know that keeping personal stress outside of the workplace can be difficult. I do my best to keep my personal life at home and report for each shift with a clean slate. I make a point to eat healthily, exercise daily, and avoid alcohol. As a resident with your program, I would be able to handle the practice stressors by staying focused on the tasks at hand, recognizing my triggers for stress, and talking with my colleagues."

Directly address how you will avoid personal stressors from entering your work life so your interviewers feel confident that you will come to each shift with a fresh mind and body. Then, talk about how you plan to handle the stress that comes with being an Emergency Medicine Resident. Before your interview, be sure to put some thought into the strategies that you use to manage stress on the job.

"I find compartmentalization to be very important. It is very important to be able to separate work life from personal life and vice versa. In addition I try to do things like meditate and exercise while at home to control stress."

"I believe in a healthy work-life balance and have found that when I am intentional about separating the two or compartmentalizing them, I can help avoid stress from either side creeping into the other. This is sometimes difficult because I like to be my true, authentic self on both sides of life and can't separate aspects of my personality or being from either environment completely. For me, I think continuing to be a well-rounded person with a diverse set of interests personally and professionally allows me to not make any one aspect of my life a core personality trait that overpowers any other and could cause me to be unable to cope with personal or professional stressors."