Dr. Colin West is a professor of Medicine, Medical Education and Biostatistics at The Mayo Clinic. His research focuses primarily on physician well-being, evidence-based medicine, biostatistics, and medical education. He has won numerous awards for work and is a thought-leader in these fields. Dr. West has developed and evaluated a comprehensive evidence-based medicine curriculum for Mayo Medical School and enacted change at the national level in the internal medicine resident career plans and current education climate. 

Today we further our conversations we’ve had previously about wellness and burnout by taking a magnifying glass to the role of the patient-doctor relationship and how this helps us as trainees and physicians find purpose and passion in our career. 

Welcome to Leading the Rounds!

Questions we asked: 

• Why did you start doing “wellness Wednesdays” on Twitter?
• Are patients more aware of physician burnout now more than ever? 
• In the airline industry, there are stories of pilots cancelling flights due to fatigue and to promote safety. How would that play out in the healthcare system? 
• How has Mayo Clinic been able to build in layers of backup to improve work environment and give trainees more time off? 
• What are ways that residency programs can support residents long term fulfillment?
• Are medical students more resilient than the general public?  
• How do we break the cycle of burnout being passed onto new trainees? 
• How does Mayo Clinic’s values mitigate bullying in training? 
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Quotes and Ideas:

• “We’re taught not to show our patients and our communities the stresses we are experiencing... but healthcare professionals are shockingly human first.” 
• “Healthcare professional and physician burnout is not the patient’s responsibility.”
• M.V.P.’s of Healthcare = patients 
  • They give us Meaning, Value, and Purpose 
• “Dehumanization and depersonalization is one of the hallmarks of burnout.” 
• “In our current training, we have to have layers of safety built in.” 
  • Swiss cheese model of avoiding errors 
• “Our own professionalism is used sometimes in a perverse way to say that you will step up; you will always step up.” 
• “We forget why we’re here.” 
• “Despite having higher burnout rates… physicians also have higher levels of resilience than the general public.” 
• Primary value at Mayo Clinic, “the needs of the patient come first” 
• Jobs, demands, resources model= “distress and burnout result when the demands of a job chronically exceed the resources available to meet those demands.” 
• “We work in healthcare teams, and the best team players lift those around them up.” 

Book Suggestion: 

• The House of God by Samuel Shem