Creating a wellness committee is a concrete first step an organization can take to foster a culture of clinician wellness.
Clinician well-being is not only critical to enhancing patient safety, but plays an important role in recruiting and retaining physicians. Stress in the medical workplace is generated by:
- Increasing internal and external complexity
- Greater pressure and accountability
- Lack of work/life balance
- Loss of autonomy and control
- Loss of revenue and higher costs of practice
- Rising number of malpractice suits and cost of insurance
An organizational commitment to create a Clinician Wellness Committee typically begins with recognition of the physician as a precious resource by the executive leadership team.
How to Create a Clinician Wellness Committee
- Get buy in from executive leaders – their support is necessary
- Find executive champion
- Use toolbox resources including:
- Elevator Speech
- Rationale, fast facts
- Return on investment calculator
- Invite clinicians (physicians and APPs) from various departments and clinics within the system (inpatient, outpatient, surgical, primary care, etc.)
- Try to get a mix of in terms of age, years worked at institution and gender so all voices represented
Determine the Clinician Wellness Committee’s Role
Clinician Wellness Committees can take on a variety of roles, including education, support and consultation. In general, these committees do not conduct formal interventions; those are more often handled by a medical executive or outside professional due to potential legal liability, confidentiality and mandated reporting requirements. Some potential activities of a Clinician Wellness Committee include:
- Hosting regular wellness seminars or programs
- Fostering support groups for clinicians dealing with similar situations; e.g., facing litigation; dealing with grief; feeling overwhelmed by work processes.
- Offering peer-to-peer coaching
How to Create a Clinician Wellness Committee Charter
Clinician Wellness Committees should be governed by a charter. In general, charters contain the following elements:
- Purpose: Brief explanation of Committee’s role
- Scope: What the Committee will and won’t do (e.g., committee will undertake educational events and provide one to one support but will not organize support groups)
- Objectives/Outcomes: What the committee hopes to accomplish
- Measures of Success: How will the committee know it has reached its objectives
- Learning and Support Needs: What does the committee need to be successful
In addition, the charter should address important administrative considerations including:
- Committee’s decision-making authority
- Who committee reports to, how often, and what is reported
- Communication expectations – what can the committee communicate to others, and through what channels
- Meeting frequency and schedule
- Number and composition of members, criteria for serving, length of term
- Officer roles and responsibilities (e.g., Chair, Vice Chair, other)
- Chair generally Prepares and/or approves agenda; chairs the meetings and facilitates discussion; ensures appropriate decisions are made; coordinates and ensures dissemination of communication documents; ensures charter is reviewed on an annual basis; ensures objectives and measures of success are updated as needed
- Vice Chair generally chairs the meeting if Chair is unavailable, facilitates discussion and ensures appropriate decisions are made; along with Chair, ensures objectives and measures of success are achieved
Tips
- Offering food helps if meetings are over lunch hour
- Change the day of the week and location of the meetings around to accommodate busy schedules and facilitate attendance (especially important on a big campus)
- Example:
January, meeting on a Monday in clinic 1 in conference room A
February, meeting on a Friday in clinic 2 in conference room B
March, meeting on Tuesday in clinic 3 in conference room C
- Example:
- Send emails between meetings to encourage everyone to have a voice if they can’t make a meeting
- See if conference phone is available for those who can’t attend in person
- Offer parking for people who have to drive to the meeting
- Develop sub committees to accomplish bigger projects
- Think about how to communicate to the broader audience (to get members, share findings, etc.):
- Monthly/Quarterly/etc. email
- Website (internal or external)