Considering Your Wellness
Good morning!
Hard to believe this is my 400th VC Notes. A lot has changed since the first time I shared a weekly column with you as vice chancellor on March 6, 2015. I hear from many of you about how much you enjoy VC Notes hitting your email each Friday and as long as you’re interested, I’ll continue to share my thoughts with you in this space.
Before I get to today’s topic, I wanted to give you a little update on our negotiations with Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Mississippi and clear up some confusion. I’ve gotten several questions lately about this topic and after some related news reports over the past week, so I want to assure you that discussions with Blue Cross continue and have never been interrupted since they started. Our hope and goal are that the two sides will soon reach a new agreement and UMMC’s hospitals, clinics, physicians and other providers will again be in the Blue Cross network.
Now, on to what I’d like to speak about today – your wellness.
With two of the calendar’s biggest and most hectic holidays approaching, I want to make a recommendation that you prioritize your physical, mental and emotional health over the next couple of months. Things can quickly get busy leading up to and surrounding the upcoming holidays, including work-related activities. I encourage you to consider yourself around these times that you are doing so much for other people, including our patients.
Dr. Nilda Maria Williams, assistant professor of radiology who serves as chair of the UMMC Physician Wellness Subcommittee, sent the below tweets that I think well encapsulate how physicians should go about doing their work with purpose, but also “in a way that is fulfilling”. She’s speaking to physicians here, but the same wisdom can be used daily by all members of the People of the U family – employee and student alike.
Dr. Williams knows a thing or two about work-life balance as a mother to three young children and married to another UMMC physician, Dr. Henry Williams, assistant professor of radiology and section chief of Interventional Radiology. Her tweets are spot on and can be helpful no matter your UMMC role. She provides additional thoughts on “Why Wellness Matters” in an article posted to the American College of Radiology website that can be found here.
I’m excited about the work being done through the Physician Wellness Subcommittee and the Office of Well-being, which is led by Dr. Josh Mann, chair of the Department of Preventive Medicine, to address and curb burnout. Our survey scores related to burnout have room for improvement, like the vast majority of health care institutions, but that can be achieved through concerted institutional and smaller-group efforts. And specific initiatives directed at physician wellness are needed to turn around the dramatic rise in burnout seen this past year according to this study published in the journal Mayo Clinic Proceedings.
These efforts have led to UMMC being added to the list of institutions supporting the National Academy of Medicine’s Plan on Health Work Force Well-Being. The plan, which is described as intending “to drive collective action to strengthen health workforce well-being and restore the health of the nation” can be found here. Also, UMMC was recently recognized for successful implementation of the American Medical Association’s Joy in Medicine program. I applaud these and other initiatives at the school and/or department level that aim to create community and reduce stress.
And just this week, work was completed on a revamped website for our RISE: Resilience in Stressful Events program. If you are struggling with something, work related or otherwise, this program is available for your use.
Ultimately, we must consider and work on ourselves so that we are better suited to work with or on others. If we are at our best, we can do our best. Dr. Williams sums it up well with this quote: “We are all made stronger by each other being well.”
I’ve shared several VC Notes columns over the past few months on the burnout/wellness topic, but that’s because it is so important. Wellness matters, ours and our patients. We must all work together and work on ourselves to be most effective in our drive toward A Healthier Mississippi.