Well-Being in Academic Medicine

Well-being in academic medicine is a critical issue facing faculty members, clinicians, researchers, residents, and students. The pandemic has only heightened the need to solve problems around well-being in academic medicine, but the AAMC addressed these issues long before. Among other initiatives, the AAMC was an early participant in the National Academy of Medicine’s Action Collaborative on Clinician Well-Being and Resilience, a network of organizations dedicated to promoting clinician well-being across all career stages and specialties.

The well-being resources on this page have been curated by the AAMC with the help of the AAMC's Council of Faculty and Academic Societies (CFAS). Please let us know if you have any suggested books, articles, or other resources to share with your colleagues and we will consider including on these pages. To engage with the AAMC's faculty well-being initiatives in more depth, contact Catherine Florio Pipas, MD, Chair of the CFAS Faculty Resilience Committee and member of the CFAS Ad Board.

The Latest in Well-Being

• Resource Compendium for Health Care Worker Well-Being - National Academy of Medicine

• Third Biennial National Summit on Promoting Well-being and Resilience in Healthcare Professionals - September 28-30, 2022 (Hosted by Ohio State University)

• Healthcare Worker Burnout Trending in Alarming Direction - Health Leaders (Dec. 15, 2021)

• The Rise of Wellness Initiatives in Health Care: Using National Survey Data to Support Effective Well-Being Champions and Wellness Programs - CFAS Faculty Resilience Committee

• COVID-19 ICU Visit Restrictions Add to Staff Stress, Burnout - Medscape

• Building resilience and well-being: keys to avoiding the worst of a looming shortage of health care workers - STAT

• Amid covid surge, hospitals suffer from worker burnout that forces some to walk off, officials say - Washington Post

• HHS Announces $103 Million from American Rescue Plan to Strengthen Resiliency and Address Burnout in the Health Workforce - Department of Health and Human Services

• Cultural And Structural Features Of Zero-Burnout Primary Care Practices - Health Affairs

• Medical burnout: Breaking bad - AAMCNews

• Processing Clinician Grief and Burnout During, and Outside of, a Pandemic - Health Leaders

• Academic Medicine May 2021 edition - focused on wellbeing, mental health, and burnout

• Supporting Graduate Student Mental Health and Well-being: Evidence-Informed Recommendations for the Graduate Community - The Council of Graduate Schools and the Jed Foundation

• The CEO Summit on Clinician Well-Being - ACGME

• CFAS Connects session led by CFAS Faculty Resilience Committee Chair and CFAS Ad Board Member Catherine Florio Pipas, MD

• Preventing a Parallel Pandemic — A National Strategy to Protect Clinicians’ Well-Being - New England Journal of Medicine (Drs. Dzau, Kirch, Nasca)

• Well-being during the pandemic:

  • 5-minute Guided Meditation Led by CFAS Chair-elect Adi Haramati, PhD

  • Tell Me More^® kit for COVID-19 care - The Arnold P. Gold Foundation

  • You Can't Pour From an Empty Cup: Why Clinicians' Spiritual Health Matters in the Time of COVID-19 - LinkedIn

  • Positive Psychology in Times of Crisis - American College of Physicians (ACP)

  • Taking Care of Your Emotional Health - CDC

  • Helping Children Cope - CDC

  • Taking Care of Your Family During Coronavirus and Other Emerging Infectious Disease Outbreaks - Center for the Study of Traumatic Stress

Getting Help

• National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-8255
• Institutions can implement the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention's Interactive Screening Program (ISP), an online program utilized by mental health services.
• Preventing Physician Distress and Suicide - an online module from the AMA's Steps Forward initiative (0.5 CME credits)
• Validated Instruments to Assess Work-Related Dimensions of Well-Being from the National Academy of Medicine's Action Collaborative on Clinician Well-Being and Resilience.

Featured

• The Rise of Wellness Initiatives in Health Care: Using National Survey Data to Support Effective Well-Being Champions and Wellness Programs - CFAS Faculty Resilience Committee

• AAMC Analysis in Brief: Burnout Among U.S. Medical School Faculty - AAMC

• It's Not Burnout, It's Moral Injury - YouTube

• Medical Student Well-Being - AAMC

• To Care Is Human — Collectively Confronting the Clinician-Burnout Crisis - The New England Journal of Medicine

• A Doctor's Dozen: Twelve Strategies for Personal Health and a Culture of Wellness - Catherine Florio Pipas

• Association Between Physician Burnout and Patient Safety, Professionalism, and Patient Satisfaction - A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis - JAMA Internal Medicine

• Addressing Clinician Well-Being - AAMC President and CEO Darrell G. Kirch, MD, NAM President Victor J. Dzau, MD, and ACGME CEO Thomas J. Nasca, MD (2018)

• Combating Clinician Burnout with Community-Building - NEJM Catalyst (July 31, 2018)

• Physician Burnout, Well-being, and Work Unit Safety Grades in Relationship to Reported Medical Errors - Mayo Clinic Proceedings (July 9, 2018)

• Why medicine leads the professions in suicide, and what we can do about it - The Conversation (May 24, 2018)

• Steps Forward
  A collection of modules from the AMA on well-being.

• Getting to Inbox Zero (video)
  Petra Lewis, MD, Professor of Radiology and OBGYN at Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center, presents a video on how to avoid being overwhelmed by email by effectively managing your inbox.

• Task Managers (video)
  Petra Lewis, MD, also describes how to manage numerous tasks effectively by using task managers.

Conferences, Programs, and Courses

Learning Resources for Leading: Top Skills, Attributes, and Behaviors Critical for Success

This collection of resources is intended to help department chairs develop skills in setting expectations, working effectively with colleagues, developing leadership skills, and dealing with challenging responsibilities.

Stanford House Staff Wellness Survey, Courtesy of Stanford Medicine and WellMD

This evaluation was designed by Stanford School of Medicine to "understand the state of the medical staff and their most pressing concerns, as well as to provide a vehicle for assessing pilot studies and creating evidence-based interventions."
Take the survey

Being a Resilient Leader

Being a Resilient Leader is a two-day, interactive and unique workshop that will cover what it means to be a resilient leader and how to exercise leadership to achieve desired results, sustained impact, and long-term professional engagement and personal satisfaction. You will walk away with a new framework and practical tools for navigating your most difficult leadership challenges, along with increased self-awareness, emotional intelligence, and commitment.

Faculty Training in Mind-Body Medicine

Faculty Training in Mind-Body Medicine is an experiential program provides faculty at health professional schools with the training, tools, and strategic thinking necessary to implement mind-body medicine skills groups in their institutions.