Humanistic Stories About the Workplace and Resident Wellness: a Missing Connection?

• Published in: Academic psychiatry 2020-10, Vol.44 (5), p.602-605
• Main Authors: Pham, Tony V., Stewart, Kearsley A., Gagliardi, Jane P.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Burnout; Communication; Communication (Thought Transfer); Community Relations; Cultural Context; Educational Case Report; Educational Environment; Ethics; Feedback (Response); Graduate Medical Education; Hospitals; Medical Education; Medicine; Medicine & Public Health; Psychiatry; Response rates; Response Rates (Questionnaires); School environment; Sense of Community; Thematic Approach; Trainees; Work environment
• ISSN: 1042-9670; 1545-7230
• DOI: 10.1007/s40596-020-01277-y

During the course of a decade at one academic hospital-based psychiatry residency training program, trainees exhibited evidence of higher than expected rates of burnout as measured by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) survey as well as through internal observations and measures. Within our psychiatry program, which includes 50 categorical and medicine-psychiatry residents, 19 fellows, 479 associated faculty members, eight research divisions, and three hospital systems with commutes as long as 30 km, we sought to develop a low-cost, low-effort intervention designed to decrease contextual detachment by expanding on story-telling initiatives to highlight shared and common humanity. Ultimately, we interviewed people including (but not limited to) the manager at the hospital’s subway restaurant; the nurse in the neurology consultation office at an affiliated hospital where interns work; the social worker at the front desk of the psychiatry residency clinic; an emeritus faculty member; an alumni and active member of the teaching faculty with experience in narrative medicine and moral injury; an alumni and active member of the teaching faculty with interests in patient- and systems-level advocacy; the woman who sells newspapers and provides blessings in the main hospital hallway; the psychiatry residency clinic director; and the associate dean for GME. Resident Feedback Of the 50 pre-intervention surveys sent in September 2017, 27 responses were returned with a response rate of 55.1%. Of the 50 post-intervention surveys sent in February 2018, 25 responses returned with a response rate of 50%.