Saturday, Oct. 21
14:30 – 15:30 (1 hr)
Meeting Room: Beluga (3rd floor – B Tower)
Sanjeev Sockalingam*, MD; Adam Tasca, MD; Julie Maggi, MD; Bruce Lo, MHI

CanMEDS Roles:

1. Health Advocate
2. Collaborator
3. Leader

At the end of this session, participants will be able to: 1) Explain the opportunities for integrating evidence and data to examine physician wellness and related initiatives and strategies; 2) Identify how a mental health organization leveraged data and informatics tools to look at physician wellness; and 3) Develop an approach for identifying relevant metrics and data sources to evaluate physician wellness and related initiatives at their organizations.

Physician burnout is at an all-time high and has been attributed to a number of factors, including extensive work hours and high clerical workload. Although many health care organizations have developed wellness committees and strategies to combat physician burnout, there have been limited data-driven approaches for evaluating physician wellness and developing effective targeted initiatives to address the core issues. At this juncture, there is a pressing need to evaluate whether an intervention is effective and to tailor strategies to the varying needs of an organization. To address these gaps, there has been growing interest to identify and examine metrics relevant to physician wellness. As a follow up to the physician wellness workshop held at the Canadian Psychiatric Association 2020 Annual Conference, this one-hour interactive workshop will provide a practical overview of the opportunities, promises, and approaches for embedding metrics in examining physician wellness. Using a rapid-fire approach, the first half of the workshop will outline examples where metrics were used to measure physician wellness and evaluate the impact of initiatives and strategies. Based on the discussion, an interactive exercise will be held for the second part of the workshop, where participants will work in small groups to build out a plan for using metrics to look at physician wellness at their own organizations. In addition to equipping participants with the necessary skills for taking a data-driven approach to physician wellness, this workshop will foster the development of a network of leaders interested in using data to improve physician wellness.

References:

1. Dyrbye LN, Trockel M, Frank E, et al. Development of a research agenda to identify evidence-based strategies to improve physician wellness and reduce burnout. Annal Intern Med 2017;166(10):743–744.
2. Schrijver I. Pathology in the medical profession? Taking the pulse of physician wellness and burnout. Arch Pathol Lab Med 2016;140(9):976–982.