"Heebies Jeebies": Long List Anxiety Syndrome in the Daily Practice of Nuclear Medicine

Introduction: With increasing utilization of PET/CT and SPECT imaging, there are increased numbers of studies with longer worklists and increased numbers of images that are associated with anxiety to finish the workload before the day ends.

These workloads lead to more ne, often face high workloads,lead to more demanding schedules with more extensive lists of tasks and responsibilities. This can lead to stress and anxiety due to number and complexity of cases affecting work-life balance.

We discuss the phenomenon of Long List Anxiety in the context of evaluation and interpretation of nuclear medicine studies and the associated implications on the nuclear medicine physician and staff.

Methods: It's understandable that longer and more complex studies in nuclear medicine can contribute to stress and anxiety among healthcare professionals. Long List Anxiety can result in pressure to complete tasks and ultimate burnout when the process continues. It's crucial for healthcare organizations to be aware of these challenges and implement strategies to support their staff, such as workload management, adequate staffing, and wellness programs. Individuals can also take steps to manage their stress, including effective time management, seeking support, and practicing self-care.

Results: Long List Anxiety can occur in nuclear medicine due to increased complexity and increase in the number of daily studies, including increased number of images in molecular imaging. In addition, with issues with maintaining adequate staff in nuclear medicine, there is increased levels of stress and anxiety, in many cases not having the ability to complete interpretation on a timely basis. Factors include increased time pressures to manage daily schedules, increased technical challanges, pressures dealing with complex studies, high levels of expertise and precesion and managing high volume complex studies with stress and burnout. We discuss methods to address these challanges and present methods to decrease anxiety, provide support and implement self-care practice programs.

Conclusions: Long list anxiety syndrome can lead to anxiety and sensation of feeling overwhelmed with long complex study lists and staffing shortages compounding the problem. We review this syndrome and discuss methods to decrease anxiety and burnout providing support and guidance while dealing with the issues.