Dr. Michelle Lall, an Assistant Professor and Assistant Residency Director is dedicated to promoting work-life balance and resilience among her co-workers and nationally. She was inspired in part by her experience growing up as the daughter of a physician who worked long hours his whole life. In addition to promoting wellness through national committees, she has developed a multi-tiered approached involving faculty, residents, advanced practice providers, as well as significant others to promote wellness at every level in her department.

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Wellness is not the sole responsibility of each individual physician, rather it is something we have to foster as a community. Many if not most of the things that contribute to burnout or detract from wellness are systems-level problems. Therefore the solutions also need to be systems-based, which inspired us to launch this series on how to promote wellness in EM. The goal is to share ideas, practices, and programs that have worked at different institutions to promote wellness. Our hope is that in reading these posts, you will be inspired to take some of the ideas and implement them in your own program. In this way we can slowly change the system that has produced a 70% burnout rate among Emergency Physicians and start to build programs and systems that promote wellness, resiliency, and career longevity. In this post, Dr. Pilarski discusses how she founded the Medical College of Wisconsin Wellness Committee, the challenges she overcame, and what the committee has accomplished.

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