Research

Physician and healthcare professional well-being has been regularly featured in plenary sessions, workshops, and breakout sessions at the national meetings of a number of major professional societies. As a leader in physician well-being research, the WellMD & WellPhD Center has led or co-authored many recent studies and publications.

Publication Types

Seminal Publications

Understanding Physician Distress

New regulations and widespread electronic health record usage have increased administrative burden and clerical work. Practice consolidation has reduced flexibility and autonomy as physicians are also increasingly tracked and measured on many fronts. The COVID-19 pandemic has compounded these pressure and added new challenges, from increased workloads to challenges with work-life integration to health and safety concerns.

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Consequences

Professional burnout and other forms of occupational distress among physicians and scientists has important personal and professional consequences. These consequences can erode patient safety and quality of care and come at a substantial cost to healthcare organizations and society at large.

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Causes and Drivers

Low professional fulfillment and high burnout are systemic issues that are primarily driven by characteristics of the work environment. Research has demonstrated that these issues are also influenced by individual factors, work unit factors, leadership, organizational factors and characteristic of the healthcare delivery system at large.

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Mobilizing Action

Although the epidemic of burnout among physicians and biomedical scientists is now widely recognized, a lack of awareness of the economic costs of this problem has been a barrier for many organizations to take action.  While there is a moral and ethical imperative to address this issue, there is also a strong business case.

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Organizational Solutions

Robust organizational efforts to advance professional fulfillment and well-being must take a holistic approach that tends to all dimensions of the model.The Stanford Model of Professional Fulfillment is a simple framework that many organizations have found to be helpful for their efforts to develop a holistic strategy to promote professional fulfillment for their physicians and other healthcare professionals.

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Individual Strategies

Interventions related to the Personal Resilience dimension of the WellMD Professional Fulfillment Model™ have been found to be effective with the appropriate organizational support. These solutions include self-care, self-valuation, improvements in sleep length and quality, successful work-life integration, and building relationships with other physicians.

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Special Topics

Acute ecological events such as the COVID-19 pandemic and other factors can greatly impact professional fulfillment and burnout rates. Recent findings show the effect such events have on physicians and the efforts that organizations and individuals can take to prepare for these unexpected incidents.

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Recent Publications

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Stories of Strength

We know that ensuring every physician’s well-being is work that’s never really done. That’s why we’re highlighting the work that physicians are doing to improve well-being for themselves, their teams and departments, and Stanford’s organization and culture.


 

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Commensality Groups

Through facilitated small-group discussion, Commensality Groups have been shown to increase the sense of connection and collegiality among physicians and build comradery and meaning in work. This simple yet powerful evidence-based approach has been shown to improve professional fulfillment and reduces burnout in randomized trials with physicians.

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WellMD & WellPhD Minute

There are many initiatives at Stanford Medicine that help physicians and scientists reduce burnout and feel professionally fulfilled. WellMD & WellPhD Minute is a video series highlighting the various updates on the positive changes happening in your practice or research environment.

 

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