Dear Colleagues,
I had the privilege of participating in the 2017 Policy Week alongside pharmacy leaders across the nation. One session that particularly sparked my interest was the
Joint Council and Commission Meeting on Clinician Well-Being and Resilience. I was pleased to learn ASHP joined the National Academy of Medicine (NAM) Action Collaborative on Clinician Well-Being and Resilience. In particular, Christina Martin, Director of Membership Forums at ASHP, and Anna Dopp, Director Clinical Guidelines and Quality Improvement at ASHP, are members of the Conceptual Model Working Group (discussed below). The goals of the collaborative are 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.
As a recent pharmacy student and current pharmacy resident, I can relate to the external (e.g., learning/practice environment, regulatory environment, organizational factors, and society) and internal (e.g., healthcare role, relationships and social support, learned skills and abilities, and personal factors) factors represented on the comprehensive conceptual model. The purpose of the conceptual model is to identify, define, and communicate factors affecting the well-being of health care professionals while promoting solutions to improve individuals, organizational, and systematic well-being to positively affect health care delivery. It is important to note the conceptual model is still a work in progress and external factors have been identified as having a greater impact on overall clinician well-being.
To date, research related to clinician well-being and resilience specific to pharmacy is limited to non-existent. It is my belief healthcare organizations and schools will need to re-evaluate their culture to encourage and promote concerns from the pharmacy workforce (pharmacists, technicians, students, residents, fellows). Often times, the pharmacy workforce are hesitant to surface concerns to their seniors of their actual well-being due to fear of being viewed as an insubordinate or unqualified to handle the workload of future jobs and/or post-graduate training. To change culture, the most impactful movement is to demonstrate the idea in action, not solely discussing the issue.1 For instance, a College of Pharmacy may develop the following slogan: "Students, WE care". Rather than starting the movement as a call-to-action, research has suggested a change in culture begins with emotion.2 When clinician leaders initiate a culture change, I believe starting on a small-scale and producing small, visible, positive outcomes will eventually lead to departmental change.
As leaders within the pharmacy profession, we need to protect our greatest asset, OUR PEOPLE. We must foster an environment among the pharmacy workforce to safely express personal well-being without the fear of career alerting repercussions. One of the most common answers I hear to the question, "Why did you go into pharmacy?" is the simple yet impactful answer, "I want to help people get well". The first sentence of ASHP’s mission statement reads: "The mission of pharmacists is to help people (NOT limited to patients) achieve optimal health outcomes." I ask……….Are we achieving optimal health outcomes if we don’t support a culture of well-being and resilience among our own people?
Jason Timothy WongPGY2 Health-System Pharmacy Administration Resident
Oregon Health & Science University
wojas@ohsu.edu
References
- Walker B, Soule SA, Changing Company Culture Requires Movement, Not a Mandate. Harvard Business Review. 2017. Web. 28 September 2017.
- Snow DA, Soule SA, A Primer on Social Movements. Contemporary Societies Series. 101-123. 2009.