Match Day! Words of Wisdom for Work

Congratulations on matching into emergency medicine! We are glad to have you. The journey you are about to embark on will be equal parts grueling and rewarding. You will be pushed to your limits but you’ll see and do some amazing things along the way. Excelling at internship and residency and fulfilling your potential goes beyond taking good care of patients. You will be expected to thrive in work and life. In this 2-part blog series we will cover some basics for internship survival, including professional development, life logistics, and wellness. To begin, we will focus on work–from finding a mentor to managing your emails.

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By Kaitlin Bowers, DO|2020-04-02T13:54:03-07:00Mar 20, 2020|COVID19, EM Match Advice, Wellness|

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!

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By Derek Monette, MD|2020-01-06T18:09:21-08:00Jan 10, 2020|Professional Development, Wellness|

National Physician Suicide Awareness Day 2019

To address the growing issue of physician suicide, the Council of Emergency Medicine Residency Directors (CORD), in collaboration with AAEM, ACEP, ACOEP, EMRA, RSA, RSO and SAEM, annually join forces to help highlight the issues and drive change.

At ALiEM Wellness Think Tank, we tackle resident issues such as preventing suicide and burnout, enhancing resilience, and promoting overall quality of life. Suicide is an important topic that affects our physicians and the future of our specialty. We advocate a culture of support, transparency and openness. If you, or someone you know is exhibiting signs of depression or suicidal ideation, please seek help immediately. Together, we can make the cultural shift to support mental health awareness in medicine and decrease depression and suicide rates.

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By Katie Rebillot, DO|2019-09-17T09:30:34-07:00Sep 17, 2019|Life, Wellness, Wellness Think Tank|

ALiEM 2019 Gram Rounds Winner

Last month, ALiEM launched a one-of-a-kind social media contest on Instagram to find the most innovative emergency medicine residency education program. Dozens of residency programs from around the country shared incredible didactic, simulation and wellness initiatives. At the end of our contest period, one residency program stood out from the rest.

Join us in congratulating the winner of ALiEM ‘Gram’ Rounds 2019: Loma Linda Emergency Medicine

We were impressed with Loma Linda’s novel approach to simulation and ability to disseminate practical clinical pearls. Be sure to visit our Instagram page @aliemteam, and check out story highlights to see all contest submissions. To learn more about the magic behind Loma Linda’s EM program, see our highlight below.

By Gabe Sudario, MD|2019-09-05T08:58:44-07:00Aug 14, 2019|Social Media & Tech, Wellness|

2019-20 Wellness Think Tank: Open call for 30 passionate EM residents focused on physician wellness

We are thrilled to announce the open call for the fourth class of the ALiEM Wellness Think Tank. Every year has a different ambitious focus and this upcoming year is no different. We are lead by a 4-person powerhouse team (Dr. Simiao Li-Sauerwine, Dr. Sarah Mott, Dr. Katie Rebillot, and Dr. Sneha Shah). Want to learn more about it? Think you have what it takes to make the 30-member cut? Membership is free, if invited. Applications are due June 14, 2019. Read all about it and apply on the Wellness Think Tank home page.

UPDATE: Deadline extended to July 15, 2019 to allow for incoming EM interns to also apply!

By Michelle Lin, MD|2019-06-16T12:39:00-07:00May 18, 2019|Wellness, Wellness Think Tank|

Beyond the Abstract: A Return to Work Policy for New Resident Parents

More women than men entered medical school in the United States for the first time in 2017. Will this generation also set new trends in parenting during their training? One study suggests that 40% of female residents plan to have a child while in residency.¹

Can our graduate medical education system withstand even a modest increase in the number of resident parents? Can your hospital?

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By Michael Gisondi, MD|2019-04-18T15:05:11-07:00Mar 19, 2019|Beyond the Abstract, Wellness|

Study: High Prevalence of Physician Burnout Among Emergency Medicine Residents Across the U.S.

In March 2017, our ALiEM Wellness Think Tank launched an ambitious initiative to try to identify the prevalence rate of U.S. emergency medicine (EM) resident burnout across the country. No study to date had been done to assess this. Amazingly we got a response from over 1,500 confirmed U.S. EM residents from 193 residency programs purely through our social media, email listservs, and Wellness Think Tank outreach efforts. We measured burnout using the Maslach Burnout Inventory-Human Services Survey (MBI-HSS). This 22-item MBI-HSS is the most common, validated tool used to measure burnout in healthcare professionals. It assesses 3 subscale domains:

Emotional exhaustion (EE), which means being emotionally depleted at work
Depersonalization (DP), which means a lack of feelings or negative, cynical feelings towards others
Personal accomplishment (PA), which is a positive sense of self-evaluation and success at work.

A combination of high EE, high DP, and/or low PA scores are correlated with burnout.^1,2 This post reviews some of the highlights from our study, High Prevalence of Burnout among Emergency Medicine Residents across the US, which was recently accepted by Annals of Emergency Medicine and published online.³

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By Michelle Lin, MD|2019-06-14T18:27:10-07:00Mar 16, 2019|Research, Wellness, Wellness Think Tank|