Action Collaborative on
Clinician Well-Being and Resilience
Every year in the United States, about 400 physicians take their own lives — a rate more than double that of the general population. Physicians experience high rates of depression, burnout, and poor work-life balance. This phenomenon cuts across all ages, stages, and career paths — from trainees to senior practitioners. And these challenges are not unique to physicians. Nurses and other clinicians experience similar effects on performance, health, and well-being.
Bottom line: The people we rely on to keep us healthy may not be healthy themselves. This fact is not only worrying in and of itself — it also has serious implications for patients. Clinician burnout has been linked to increased medical errors and patient dissatisfaction. How can we ensure that our care workforce is healthy, resilient, and functioning at its highest capacity?
About the Initiative
The National Academy of Medicine will build a collaborative platform for supporting and improving clinician well-being and resilience across multiple organizations, including clinician and consumer groups as well as health care organizations and policy making bodies. This “action collaborative” will provide the venue for a set of collaborative activities, grounded in evidence-based knowledge, to (1) assess and understand the underlying causes of clinician burnout and suicide, and (2) advance solutions that reverse the trends in clinician stress, burnout, and suicide. Activities of the collaborative will include working meetings among participating groups, public workshops, and stakeholder engagement activities.
Action Collaborative Leadership
Victor Dzau, chair
Darrell Kirch, co-chair
Thomas Nasca, co-chair
Action Collaborative Working Groups
Please click here to view members our four working groups.
Action Collaborative News
New Discussion Paper
On July 5, 2017, the Action Collaborative released a discussion paper entitled Burnout Among Health Care Professionals: A Call to Explore and Address This Underrecognized Threat to Safe, High-Quality Care.
The US health care system is rapidly changing in an effort to deliver better care, improve health, and lower costs while providing care for an aging population with high rates of chronic disease and co-morbidities. Among the changes affecting clinical practice are new payment and delivery approaches, electronic health records, patient portals, and publicly reported quality metrics—all of which change the landscape of how care is provided, documented, and reimbursed. Navigating these changes are health care professionals (HCPs), whose daily work is critical to the success of health care improvement. Unfortunately, as a result of these changes and resulting added pressures, many HCPs are burned out, a syndrome characterized by a high degree of emotional exhaustion and high depersonalization (i.e., cynicism), and a low sense of personal accomplishment from work. Read the discussion paper >>
Upcoming Meetings
On July 14, 2017, the Action Collaborative on Clinician Well-Being and Resilience will host its first public meeting in Washington, DC. Establishing Clinician Well-Being as a National Priority will provide an opportunity for the public and invited experts to provide feedback on the direction of the collaborative, and will highlight research and examples of promising approaches to promoting well-being. Live webcast will be available for those who cannot attend in person. Register >>
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Inaugural Sponsors
ABFM Foundation
Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education
Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education
Aetna
Alliance of Independent Academic Medical Centers
American Academy of Family Physicians
American Academy of Neurology
American Academy of Pediatrics
American Association of Colleges of Nursing
American Association of Colleges of Osteopathic Medicine
American Association of Critical-Care Nurses
American Board of Internal Medicine and the ABIM Foundation
American Board of Medical Specialties
American College of Emergency Physicians
American College of Physicians
American College of Surgeons
American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists
American Dental Education Association
American Hospital Association
American Medical Association
American Nurses Association
American Osteopathic Association
American Psychiatric Association
American Society of Anesthesiologists
American Society of Health-System Pharmacists
Association of American Medical Colleges (with support from Centers for Disease Control and Prevention)
Council of Medical Specialty Societies
CRICO
Federation of State Medical Boards
IBM Watson Health
Johns Hopkins Medicine
Massachusetts General Hospital
Society for Academic Emergency Medicine and Association of Academic Chairs of Emergency Medicine
Society of Neurological Surgeons
UAB Medicine
UnitedHealth Group
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NAM Staff
Charlee Alexander (main contact)
Kimber Bogard
Sharyl Nass
Mariana Zindel
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Meetings
Related Resources
Meeting Recap: July 7 Meeting on Clinician Resilience and Well-Being
Meeting Recap: January 6 Planning Meeting
NAM Perspectives: To download our publications related to clinician well-being, please click here.
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