Promoting Resident Wellness
- 1 May 2015
- journal article
- research article
- Published by Ovid Technologies (Wolters Kluwer Health) in Academic Medicine
- Vol. 90 (5), 678-683
- https://doi.org/10.1097/acm.0000000000000541
Abstract
Purpose To evaluate awareness and utilization of a new institutional policy to grant residents time off to access personal and family health care. Method In 2012, two years after policy implementation, an electronic survey was sent to all 546 residents and fellows at a tertiary care academic medical center in the United States. Residents were asked questions regarding awareness of the time-off policy, use of the policy, health care status, reasons for policy use, and barriers to use. Results A total of 490 (90%) residents responded. Eighty-nine percent of those surveyed were aware of the policy. Of those who were aware, 49.7% used the policy to access health care. Top reasons for policy use were for personal routine or preventive health care, dental care, and urgent health care needs. The most commonly reported barrier to policy use was concern about the impact the resident’s absence would have on colleagues. Conclusions Implementation of policies to prospectively schedule residents’ time off during business hours to address health care needs is an important means to promote resident wellness. Such policies remove one commonly cited barrier to residents’ access to health care. However, residents still reported concerns about impact on peers and patients as the main reason they were reluctant to take the time off to address their health care needs. More work is needed on both wellness policy implementation practices and on refining the systems that will allow seamless and guiltless transitions of care.Keywords
This publication has 9 references indexed in Scilit:
- The inevitability of physician burnout: Implications for interventionsBurnout Research, 2014
- “If You Build It, They Will Come”: Attitudes of Medical Residents and Fellows About Seeking Services in a Resident Wellness ProgramJournal of Graduate Medical Education, 2013
- PerspectiveAcademic Medicine, 2012
- A Comparison Between Physicians and Demographically Similar Peers in Accessing Personal Health CareAcademic Medicine, 2012
- Personal time off and residents’ career satisfaction, attitudes and emotionsMedical Education, 2010
- Changing the Conversation From Burnout to Wellness: Physician Well-being in Residency Training ProgramsJournal of Graduate Medical Education, 2009
- When Residents Need Health Care: Stigma of the Patient RoleAcademic Psychiatry, 2009
- An Exploratory Study of Resident Burnout and WellnessAcademic Medicine, 2009
- Health and health care among housestaff in four U.S. internal medicine residency programsJournal of General Internal Medicine, 2000