Impact of a family medicine resident wellness curriculum: a feasibility study

Abstract

BackgroundUp to 60% of practicing physicians report symptoms of burnout, which often peak during residency. Residency is also a relevant time for habits of self-care and resiliency to be emphasized. A growing literature underscores the importance of this; however, evidence about effective burnout prevention curriculum during residency remains limited.ObjectivesThe purpose of this project is to evaluate the impact of a new, 1-month wellness curriculum for 12 second-year family medicine residents on burnout, empathy, stress, and self-compassion.MethodsThe pilot program, introduced during a new rotation emphasizing competencies around leadership, focused on teaching skills to cultivate mindfulness and self-compassion in order to enhance empathy and reduce stress. Pre-assessments and 3-month follow-up assessments on measures of burnout, empathy, self-compassion, and perceived stress were collected to evaluate the impact of the curriculum. It was hypothesized that this curriculum would enhance empathy and self-compassion as well as reduce stress and burnout among family medicine residents.ResultsDescriptive statistics revealed positive trends on the mean scores of all the measures, particularly the Mindfulness Scale of the Self-Compassion Inventory and the Jefferson Empathy Scale. However, the small sample size and lack of sufficient power to detect meaningful differences limited the use of inferential statistics.ConclusionsThis feasibility study demonstrates how a residency wellness curriculum can be developed, implemented, and evaluated with promising results, including high participant satisfaction.

Development of an Emergency Medicine Wellness Curriculum

“…Despite the prevalence of burnout and its significant implications, there remain few published residency wellness curricula and no multicenter residency curricular collaborations; outcome assessments of published curricula are also very limited . In response to this gap of wellness education in residency training, the authors developed the first formal, sustainable EM wellness curriculum.…”

“…The curriculum integrates components of published non‐EM wellness curricula and online academic wellness programs with Hettler's commonly cited Six Dimensions of Wellness: Social, Spiritual, Occupational, Physical, Emotional, and Intellectual . It includes bimonthly structured didactic elements, individualized interactive instruction (III) assignments, and additional Internet‐based resources.…”

The Implementation of a National Multifaceted Emergency Medicine Resident Wellness Curriculum Is Not Associated With Changes in Burnout

“…More comprehensive resident wellness curricula have been published. In general, conclusions about effectiveness are limited by lack of assessment and/or by the small number of participants and single‐site design . A wellness curriculum developed over 6 years at the William Beaumont Family Medicine Residency Program emphasized how a curriculum including both residents and faculty members, and a “wellness champion” led to durable culture change .…”

Can a family medicine rotation improve medical students’ knowledge, skills and attitude towards primary care in Vietnam? A pre‐test–post‐test comparison and qualitative survey

“…We used a validated MCQ test for knowledge, and OSCE for communication skills, self‐reporting on knowledge, skill and attitude improvement; and a qualitative study to explore students’ perceptions. These methods are widely used in international research with high validity and are viewed positively by students .…”