“A Call to Action: Align Well-being and Antiracism Strategies”
By Eileen Barrett, MD, MPH, MACP; N. Mariam Salas, MD; Charlene Dewey, MD, MEd, MACP; Jonathan Ripp, MD, MPH, ACP Member; and Susan Thompson Hingle, MD, MACP
ACP Internist
Health care organizations must adopt antiracist policies if they want to prevent staff burnout and promote clinician well-being argue the authors of this call to action. Promoting antiracism and battling systemic racism within the culture of medicine will help all clinicians and their patients by offering a healthier and more inclusive organizational environment.
Studies have demonstrated that race-concordant patient-clinician dyads have better outcomes and that inclusive, diverse teams provide better patient care and are more innovative. Given that the increasingly diverse U.S. population needs a similarly diversified clinician workforce to adequately meet its health care needs, barriers to recruitment, retention, advancement, and career fulfillment of clinicians of color must be removed.
“Health Care Organizations Should Be as Generous as Their Workers”
By Leonard L. Berry, PhD, MBA, and Rana Lee Adawi Awdish, MD
Annals of Internal Medicine
This Annals opinion article argues that health care organizations should practice cultural generosity with their workforce to help maintain staff morale, prevent burnout, and improve patient care. Health care organizations must prioritize community building, workforce safety, and fair compensation.
The best organizations make generosity a foundational principle of their culture. They epitomize fairness, kindness, and character. They offer a sense of mission and purpose. If health care workers witness and feel that generosity daily, so will patients and their families.
“A Parallel Pandemic Hits Health Care Workers: Trauma and Exhaustion”
By Andrew Jacobs
The New York Times
As the COVID-19 pandemic enters its second year, health care workers are increasingly exhausted and traumatized. This article from The New York Times interviews frontline workers and medical leadership as they discuss the ongoing toll the pandemic is taking on its workforce.
Researchers say the pandemic's toll on the nation's health care work force will play out long after the coronavirus is tamed.
“Avoiding Burnout and Tending to Mental Health as the Pandemic Runs Into a Second Year”
“Show Me the Science” Podcast
This podcast episode discusses the toll the ongoing stress of the COVID-19 pandemic is having on health care workers, students, teachers, parents, and other vulnerable members of society. An internal medicine resident discusses the stress he's been under treating COVID-19 patients and how he decided to seek help with his own mental health.
Doctors, notoriously, are care givers and not care receivers. We don't think about ourselves as people who need treatment, but we think about the many ways that we can provide and help. We end up in this place where we look at the person next to us and they are stoic and they aren't feeling, so that's just what we do.
Discuss this topic with other ACP members in ACP's Physician Well-being and Professional Fulfillment Forum.
Back to the March 19, 2021 issue of ACP IM Thriving