Top Things to Know: Physician Wellness in Academic CV Medicine
Published: September 19, 2022
Prepared by Anne Leonard MPH, BSN, RN, FAHA Senior Science and Medicine Advisor - Lead
- The American Heart Association believes that the well-being of clinicians, researchers and the entire health care workforce is paramount to achieving excellence in clinical care and academic pursuits.
- Clinician well-being is often described as having a feeling of satisfaction and engagement along with a sense of professional fulfillment and meaning in work.
- Academic medicine as a practice model serves as a unique role in our society. Clinical care is an important part of the academic mission as well as the educational and research missions implicit in academic medicine.
- Sustainability of health care in the United States is dependent on an educated and an expertly trained physician workforce directly provided by academic medicine models.
- To support and promote the growth and sustainability of academic medicine, attracting top talent from fellows-in-training (FITs) and early career faculty is of vital importance.
- With the rising health care needs of the nation, providers are experiencing an unprecedented demand, and individual wellness and burnout is being more closely examined.
- Burnout is an occupational hazard resulting from excessive workplace stress and is characterized by emotional exhaustion, de-personalization and dissatisfaction with personal accomplishments. The consequences of burnout are not insignificant and include lower quality of patient care, higher rates of medical errors, and decreased productivity that leads to reduced patient satisfaction.
- This statement discusses efficiencies in the workplace to help mitigate work overload and burnout. Efficiencies presented in this paper include time management, managing communication, meeting efficiency, and project management.
- This scientific statement focuses on practical ideas and constructs, such as career success and alignment of work assignments with personal goals, that may lend to individual influence.
- The statement discusses several roles of the academic physician including in the clinical setting (clinical academic physician), in the education setting (physician educator), and in the research setting (as physician scientist).
- This statement outlines the unique drivers of burnout in academic cardiovascular medicine, proposes both system-level and personal interventions to mitigate it and to support future physician-scientists, clinician-educators and clinical academic physicians.
Citation
Bradley EA, Winchester D, Alfonso CE, Carpenter AJ, Cohen MS, Coleman DM, Jacob M, Jneid H, Leal MA, Mahmoud Z, Mehta LS, Sivaram CA; on behalf of the American Heart Association Fellows in Training and Early Career Committee of the Council on Clinical Cardiology; Council on Cardiovascular Surgery and Anesthesia; Council on Lifelong Congenital Heart Disease and Heart Health in the Young; and Stroke Council. Physician wellness in academic cardiovascular medicine: a scientific statement from the American Heart Association [published online ahead of print September 19, 2022]. Circulation. doi: 10.1161/CIR.0000000000001093