2022 Stanford Medicine Faculty & GME Survey

March 22, 2022

Dear Colleague,
 
We know the last two years have been turbulent and challenging and that the first several months of 2022 have been particularly intense. It has been 18 months since we systematically gathered input and feedback on the experience of clinical faculty at Stanford Medicine, and almost 3 years since we have done so for basic science faculty.

Please take 10-15 minutes to complete the 2022 Stanford Medicine Faculty Survey. The survey is the first step in a robust improvement cycle that involves the school, including each department, as well as the hospitals. Your responses will help inform operational improvement efforts to make Stanford a better place for all to educate, work, and advance the field of medicine.

A high response rate is vital to ensure the results accurately represent the experience of Stanford faculty and to ensure that your voice is heard. Data from the previous surveys have been used to drive change in various domains. Your responses will guide our efforts to increase efficiency in your work setting, build a culture that supports wellness and professional fulfillment across Stanford Medicine, enhance research, and improve quality of care for our patients. 

This year, the three departments with the highest response rates will receive $50 per respondent to be used for wellness-related activities in their department.

The survey is being administered by a third-party organization, and your individual responses will remain confidential. Only anonymous, de-identified data is shared with Stanford. Thank you in advance for your participation in this important activity.

Respectfully,

Lloyd Minor, M.D.
Dean, Stanford School of Medicine

Linda Boxer, M.D., Ph.D.
Vice Dean, School of Medicine

David Entwistle 
CEO, Stanford Health Care
  
Paul A. King 
CEO, Stanford Children’s Health

Tait Shanafelt, M.D. 
Chief Wellness Officer, Stanford Medicine
Associate Dean, Stanford School of Medicine

Stanford remains committed to improving the wellness and professional fulfillment of our faculty and trainees. In order to make progress, we need to hear your perspective. The survey is the first step in a robust improvement cycle that involves the school, including each deparment, as well as the hospitals. Your responses along with those from previous surveys will help inform operational improvement efforts to make Stanford a better place for all to practice, educate, train, and advance the field of medicine.

A high response rate is vital, not only to ensure the results accurately represent the experience of Stanford faculty and trainees, but also because it ensures that your voice is heard. Your responses will help Stanford Medicine take data-driven actions to improve our pracitice and training environments and help guide system-level improvements to increase both the quality of care and as well as the well-being and professional fulfillment of our faculty and trainees.

When we began our physician and scientist wellness efforts, it was apparent that assessment of faculty and trainee wellness status and contributing factors was necessary on a regular basis. Such evaluations help us to understand the state of our faculty and trainees, their most pressing concerns, and target improvement efforts. Additionally the survey helps us assess change over time in wellness variables, which informs the evaluation of programs and strategies intended to improve well-being.

To that end, the WellMD & WellPhD team has led the development and validation of many scales in the surveys to measure clinician and scientist wellness and professional fulfillment.

Due to the interest in our survey nationally and our desire to be a data repository for faculty wellness, we have created the Healthcare Professional Well-being Academic Consortium (PWAC) to support other academic institutions in their wellness needs and obtain survey benchmarks from peer institutions. PWAC assists medical organizations in longitudinal assessment of their medical providers and determination of internal need for interventions. The consortium offers the survey to multiple provider types including medical staff, residents, fellows, nurse practitioners, and physician assistants. Find more information about the consortium on the PWAC website.

While all three versions of the survey are very similar, there are a few slight variations in survey quetion sets in order to best capture feedback on your work environment. Please see the "categories of personal information" question in the Confidentiality section below for more details on the specific question sets in each survey.

The survey is being administered by a third-party organization, SullivanLuallin Group, an independent survey administrator.

Your personally identifiable data associated with this survey will not be available to any Stanford employee and will be accessible only to limited personnel appointed to manage the data and the IT personnel who maintain the data at the SullivanLuallin Group. 

Stanford Medicine will adhere to the laws and policies in place to protect the confidentiality of your personal information. Your personally identifiable information will NOT be shared with Stanford Medicine. Your anonymized information will become part of a database that will be used to generate aggregate results and survey reports. Identifiable data will not be released for any reason. Data released by SullivanLuallin Group to Stanford for any approved purpose will first be de-identified by removing any personal identifying information in addition to removing demographic information when combinations of any demographic information (e.g. age group, gender, race, ethnicity, department, division, or academic rank information) are unique to any group of fewer than five individuals.

SullivanLuallin Group will conduct the survey through ServiceSTAT, a proprietary online survey administration, database and reporting tool. The ServiceSTAT survey tool is a cloud-based tool for creating and administering online surveys. The database will be stored using the resources of Microsoft’s Azure on a password-protected, encrypted computer system that is HIPAA compliant and has limited access and is in a locked office in a controlled facility.

View our full privacy statement for the GME Doctor Survey

View our full privacy statement for the clinically-focused faculty survey
View our full privacy statement for the research-focused faculty survey

Since the clinical faculty and GME versions of the survey are a medical staff quality initiative, California Code 1157 protects responses from these surveys from legal discovery. Disclosure from the clinical faculty and GME surveys cannot be required even in a court of law.

For the GME Doctor Survey:

Our online surveys identify you by your e-mail address, which will be used by SullivanLuallin Group to confidentially link your responses across time. This survey collects information regarding the following: Professional Fulfillment, Burnout, EHR Helpfulness, Efficiency of Clinical Practice, Program Leadership, Organizational & Personal Values Alignment, Intent to Leave Training, Work Hours and Load, Self-Valuation, Sleep-Related Impairment, Negative Impact of Work on Relationships, Mistreatment, Protection and Respect, Help Seeking Stigma, Teamwork and Safety Climate, Isolation, Lactation Challenges, Demographics, Specialty, Sub-Specialty, Areas of Distress, and suggestions for improvement. You may skip any question you prefer not to answer, choose "Prefer not to answer" where applicable, or go back and change your selections before submitting the survey.

For the clinically-focused faculty survey:

Our online surveys identify you by your e-mail address, which will be used by SullivanLuallin Group to confidentially link your responses across time. This survey collects information regarding the following: Professional Fulfillment, Burnout, EHR Helpfulness, Efficiency of Clinical Practice, Organizational Leadership, Organizational & Personal Values Alignment, Turnover Intention, Work Hours and Load, Self-Valuation, Sleep-Related Impairment, Negative Impact of Work on Relationships, Mistreatment, Protection and Respect, Help Seeking Stigma, Teamwork and Safety Climate, Isolation, Lactation Challenges, Demographics, Specialty, Sub-Specialty, Areas of Distress, and suggestions for improvement. You may skip any question you prefer not to answer, choose "Prefer not to answer" where applicable, or go back and change your selections before submitting the survey.

For the non-clinical fauculty survey:

Our online surveys identify you by your e-mail address, which will be used by SullivanLuallin Group to confidentially link your responses across time. This survey collects information regarding the following: Professional Fulfillment, Burnout, Organizational Leadership, Organizational & Personal Values Alignment, Turnover Intention, Work Hours and Load, Work Stress, COVID-19 Risk and Return to Work, Self-Valuation, Sleep-Related Impairment, Negative Impact of Work on Relationships, Mistreatment, Protection and Respect, Isolation, Lactation Challenges, Help-seeking, Imposter Phenomenon, Demographics, Specialty, Sub-Specialty, Areas of Distress, and suggestions for improvement. You may skip any question you prefer not to answer, choose "Prefer not to answer" where applicable, or go back and change your selections before submitting the survey.

Your responses will be used primarily for the purpose of helping Stanford Medicine take data-driven actions to improve the well-being and professional fulfillment of our faculty and trainees. Your personally identifiable data will not be available to any Stanford employee. Only your deidentified data will be shared with Stanford. Data collected from this survey may be used for the following additional purposes, as permitted or required by law:

• Improving quality of care and teamwork across Stanford Medicine
• Providing norms against which sub-groups can be compared
• Suggesting recommendations to inform programming to improve well-being for faculty
• Evaluating relationships between wellness variables as well as demographic and professional characteristics to enhance and customize efforts to improve wellness
• Applying for, and/or to justify, funding for programs that will help promote well-being for faculty
• Assessing change over time in wellness variables, to inform the evaluation of programs and strategies intended to improve well-being

When used for these purposes, your survey data will be combined with the data of other respondents, as well as data collected from other sources, and subjected to aggregate data analysis and reporting to groups and individuals within Stanford Medicine. No personally identifying information will be included in such reports.

By completing our survey, you agree that your data may be gathered and stored in our database. If you would like your data changed or removed from our database, or if you have any other questions or concerns, please email us at wellmdcenter@stanford.edu. After the survey closes and a data set has been rigorously de-identified, we will not be able to remove individual respondents’ data from the de-identified data set.

All active Stanford Medicine clinical residents and fellows are being asked to complete the Doctor Survey for Residents and Fellows. If you have received this survey in error, please contact us at wellmdcenter@stanford.edu.

All active Stanford Medicine faculty who have clinical duties, including members of the university tenure, medical center, clinician educator, and instructor lines, are asked to take the clinically-focused faculty survey. If you have received this survey in error, please contact us at wellmdcenter@stanford.edu.

All active Stanford University faculty who do not have clinical patient care duties, outside of research efforts, including members of the university tenure, medical center, clinician educator, and instructor lines, are asked to take the research-focused faculty survey. If you have received this survey in error, please contact us at wellmdcenter@stanford.edu.

The Stanford Medicine Doctor Survey for Residents and Fellows opened on August 30, 2022 and will close on October 11, 2022.

The Stanford Medicine Faculty Survey was open March 22 - May 3, 2022.

The survey should take about 10-15 minutes to complete.

An email invitation from Stanford Medicine Chief Wellness Officer <surveys@sullivanluallingroup.com> was sent to all eligible residents and fellows on Tuesday, August 30, 2022, with a personal link to the online survey. Periodic email reminders, containing the same personal email link, will be sent to those who haven’t responded until October 11, 2022, when the survey closes. The survey can be completed in one session or in multiple sessions using the same link.

If you have trouble finding the survey invitation email or reminders, please search your inbox or spam folder using the hashtag: #2022DoctorSurvey.

For the GME version of the survey, the three residency programs and three fellowship programs with the highest responses rates will receive $50 per respondent to be used by the training program for wellness-related activities.

For the Faculty version of the survey, the three departments with the highest responses rates received $50 per respondent to be used for wellness-related activities in the department. This was calculated separately for the clinical faculty survey and the non-clinical faculty survey.

For the GME version of the survey, the organization-wide survey results will be shared with school and hospital leaders as well as trainees in November and early December 2022. Program-specific results will be disseminated in January of 2023. Program Directors will share the results with their teams in February and March 2023 and will work to incorporate the results into local improvement projects.

For the Faculty version of the survey, the organization-wide survey results were shared with school and hospital leaders as well as all faculty in May and early June 2022. Department and division-specific results were disseminated to department and division leaders in May – July 2022. Department and division leaders shared the results with their teams in Summer 2022 and will work to incorporate the results into local improvement projects.

The overall Stanford Medicine results will be shared with you via email. 

For the faculty surveys, the department and division-specific results were reported to the Department Chair, Division Chief, and Dean Lloyd Minor. Results will also be shared with all faculty well-being stakeholders as relevant.

For the GME version of the survey, program reports will be shared with the Department Chair, who will cascade them through the department. Program Directors will share the results with trainees as well as attendings, as applicable.

Please feel free to email us at wellmdcenter@stanford.edu.