Team Lead

• Stephanie Mueller, MD, MPH (Brigham and Women’s Hospital)

Authors

• Krishna Chokshi, MD (Mount Sinai Hospital)
• James Clements, MD (Oregon Health and Science University)
• Elizabeth Murphy, MD, SFHM (University of Chicago)
• Ashwini Niranjan-Azadi, MD (Johns Hopkins University)
• Andrew Schram, MD, MBA (University of Chicago)
• Gena Walker, MD (University of Pittsburgh)

As hospitals across the country prepared and cared for surges of COVID-19 positive patients, hospitalists suddenly faced real and significant concerns about their safety and well-being.  Concerns stemmed from issues such as PPE (personal protective equipment) and staffing shortages, lack of adequate child- and elder-care options, and managing the fear and uncertainty of being frontline clinicians during a global pandemic. Recognizing that these issues likely contribute to any preexisting feelings of burnout, many institutions developed “wellness” strategies to help hospitalists and other staff manage COVID-19 related stressors in various ways.

We collected information about physician wellness offerings from 26 academic medical centers via review of content directly provided to us (e.g., institutional websites, other resources of wellness offerings) in addition to survey data collected from participating HOMERuN sites. We organized the information collected on provider wellness offerings utilizing the Press-Ganey “Caring for Caregivers: A Leadership Checklist,”¹ with the addition of several essential wellness components agreed upon by this working group, influenced by American Medical Association guidelines on addressing provider wellness.²

Professional Society Guidance

The Press-Ganey “Caring for the Caregivers: A Leadership Checklist¹ provides a list as a starting point for leadership to help protect their workforce from physical and emotional harm.

The Society of Hospital Medicine³ held a webinar on Provider Well-being Strategies for Hospitalist Wellbeing Initiatives.

The American Medical Association² released recommendations for changes to be implemented by health care leadership to ensure provider well-being.