Identifying Gaps and Launching Resident Wellness Initiatives: The 2017 Resident Wellness Consensus Summit.

Fareen Zaver,Nicole Battaglioli,William Denq,Emberlynn L Liu,Arlene Chung,Michelle Lin,Anne Messman

doi:10.5811/westjem.2017.11.36240

Abstract

IntroductionBurnout, depression, and suicidality among residents of all specialties have become a critical focus for the medical education community, especially among learners in graduate medical education. In 2017 the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) updated the Common Program Requirements to focus more on resident wellbeing. To address this issue, one working group from the 2017 Resident Wellness Consensus Summit (RWCS) focused on wellness program innovations and initiatives in emergency medicine (EM) residency programs.MethodsOver a seven-month period leading up to the RWCS event, the Programmatic Initiatives workgroup convened virtually in the Wellness Think Tank, an online, resident community consisting of 142 residents from 100 EM residencies in North America. A 15-person subgroup (13 residents, two faculty facilitators) met at the RWCS to develop a public, central repository of initiatives for programs, as well as tools to assist programs in identifying gaps in their overarching wellness programs.ResultsAn online submission form and central database of wellness initiatives were created and accessible to the public. Wellness Think Tank members collected an initial 36 submissions for the database by the time of the RWCS event. Based on general workplace, needs-assessment tools on employee wellbeing and Kern’s model for curriculum development, a resident-based needs-assessment survey and an implementation worksheet were created to assist residency programs in wellness program development.ConclusionThe Programmatic Initiatives workgroup from the resident-driven RWCS event created tools to assist EM residency programs in identifying existing initiatives and gaps in their wellness programs to meet the ACGME’s expanded focus on resident wellbeing.

Highlights

Burnout, depression, and suicidality among residents of all specialties have become a critical focus for the medical education community, especially among learners in graduate medical education
Over a seven-month period leading up to the Resident Wellness Consensus Summit (RWCS) event, the Programmatic Initiatives workgroup convened virtually in the Wellness Think Tank, an online, resident community consisting of 142 residents from 100 emergency medicine (EM) residencies in North America
The Programmatic Initiatives working group identified an initial 36 unique residency wellness initiatives, collected from the Wellness Think Tank and Chief Resident Incubator communities. These initiatives are listed in a centralized, searchable, online database open to the public along with a contributor form for future submissions at https://www.aliem.com/wellness-think-tank/wellnessinitiatives-database/

Summary

Introduction

Depression, and suicidality among residents of all specialties have become a critical focus for the medical education community, especially among learners in graduate medical education. In 2017 the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) updated the Common Program Requirements to focus more on resident wellbeing. Depression, and suicidality among residents of all specialties have become a critical focus of attention for the medical education community. Identifying Gaps and Launching Resident Wellness Initiatives approved major changes to the Common Program Requirements in 2017. These changes establish a mandate to educate residents and faculty members in the identification of burnout, depression, and substance abuse and for implementing programs that encourage optimal resident and faculty wellbeing.[2] There are no roadmaps or guidelines for residency programs to create such wellness programs to adequately address this mandate. Evidence supporting the efficacy of these interventions is sparse and often limited to single institutions and small sample sizes.[3,4] there is no established method of sharing preliminary experiences and lessons learned from these interventions with other residency programs seeking to improve their wellness curricula

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