Wellness Initiatives

“The part can never be well unless the whole is well.” – Plato

The rigors of post-graduate training can strain even the most stoic of residents – the next task, the next project, the next shift. These reduce our resiliency to stressful situations. The likelihood is that your program has worked very hard to develop new and innovative initiatives to improve resident wellness and resiliency. And chances are, they have done this in-house. It takes tremendous efforts, however, to create and revise the efforts. In this digital age of social media, this siloed approach no longer is necessary because programs can easily get feedback and share their experiences with others.

Through the Wellness Think Tank, we are excited to share an online centralized, crowdsourced database of wellness initiatives that have been launched at different Emergency Medicine residency programs across North America. The initiatives range from social events such as residency retreats and post-inservice training exam celebrations to care packages for residents on difficult rotations and award recognition systems such as Save of the Month. The database has a sort and filter function to more rapidly identify the innovations most useful for your program. This repository is meant to be a growing document of innovations. Feel free to browse through our first 38 contributed initiatives.

View the Wellness Initiatives Database

Call to Action

The goal is to have EM residency programs share their innovations and lessons learned
so that we can continue to build and learn from the collective community. We want to expand and develop an environment of wellness and resiliency.

Ideas beget more ideas.

Submit your residency program’s wellness initiative
William Denq, MD CAQ-SM

William Denq, MD CAQ-SM

Assistant Professor
Department of Emergency Medicine
University of Arizona
William Denq, MD CAQ-SM

@willdenq

Clinical Assistant Professor Emergency Medicine and Sports Medicine University of Arizona George Washington University '18 University of Pittsburgh '14 and '10
Fareen Zaver, MD

Fareen Zaver, MD

Chief Operating Officer, Chief Resident Incubator 2017-18
Lead Editor/Co-Founder of ALiEM Approved Instructional Resources - Professional (AIR-Pro)
Champion, 2016-17 ALiEM Chief Resident Incubator
Board Member, 2016-17 ALiEM Wellness Think Tank
Deputy Head - Education and Clinical Assistant Professor for Emergency Medicine
University of Calgary Emergency Department
Fareen Zaver, MD

@fzaver

@UCalgaryEM Clinical Educator, interests in transition to practice, gender equity, #FOAMed @ALiEMteam & @WeAreCanadiEM #Meded #genderequity