Peer Accountability: A Strategy for Maintaining Commitment to Personal and Professional Obligations
There are a number of personal attributes characterizing the professional identity of “physician.” We are dedicated to patients, committed to lifelong learning, and responsible for a variety of other professional obligations. Each requires physicians to be highly accountable – obligated or willing to accept responsibility for one’s actions. In this post we present examples of how we’ve adopted peer accountability as a strategy to help us with the myriad responsibilities and obligations at the heart of our profession. Just in time for the New Year – we challenge each of our readers to consider finding an “accountability partner” in 2020!
This is a call to action for residents who have the creativity and passion to make life better for all trainees. The 2017 Wellness Think Tank survey of more than 1,500 EM residents found that, on average, 15 out of every 16 residents are struggling with burnout. It’s time to change that! We are looking for motivated residents to be a part of a one-of-a-kind grassroots movement to create a better and more sustainable culture within Emergency Medicine. Apply to join the 2018 Wellness Think Tank today!
The first ever Resident Wellness Consensus Summit (RWCS) was held this year as a pre-day to Essentials of EM on May 15, 2017 in Las Vegas. This was an amazing opportunity for residents across North America to come together and discuss the important topic of resident wellness. We even had some participants from Fiji! Many of the attendees participated in pre-work for the RWCS through their involvement in the 
When I got back home from taking [my board exams], having all these [negative] feelings swirling through my head, I remember driving up and seeing my wife and baby sitting on the porch and suddenly being like, “Isn’t this what life is all about? Is it really about studying for an exam? Is it really about pushing yourself to get triple-boarded or do this or that within medicine? I mean, isn’t THIS what it’s about? Having a wife and a child, a family to call your own, aren’t these the things that are most important that we should value?” After that point, after seeing them on the porch and over the next couple weeks, things really started to change for me.
“One of the residents that I was working with was yelled at once by somebody else because he had cried while giving a family bad news. I think everyone knows when you’re giving them bad news; it’s not like a big secret. You maintaining a great deal of composure doesn’t change that fact. I think that we’re allowed to be human. If we force ourselves not to be human or have any degree of human emotion, that’s obviously not putting us on the path to wellness and certainly if we force other people not to be human that’s not putting either them or us on the path to wellness.”