New Article in New England Journal of Medicine Addresses Physician Wellbeing

A new article in the New England Journal of Medicine sheds light on the necessity for established, evidence-based strategies to “address the crisis in physician wellbeing.” Michigan Medicine has the news.

The authors of the article and their teams have “spent more than almost two decades studying the mental and physical health of over 28,000 physicians in their first year of post-medical school training, through the Intern Health Study.” The study identified workload as the “strongest and most consistent factor associated with wellbeing.”

Srijan Sen, one of the article’s co-authors, says that “the fundamental problem is that we are asking too few physicians to do too much work,” and “work hour reduction has facilitated meaningful improvement in wellbeing.”

The review “also found that physicians in underrepresented groups, such as women and those from minority racial and ethnic groups, face distinctive stressors that affect wellbeing, such as discrimination, harassment, sexism, and racism in medicine.”

The authors recommend that all health systems take certain next steps, including implementing and prioritizing “interventions that target work hours and workload;” eliminating “policies that discourage physicians from seeking treatment for mental health or substance use disorders;” implementing “policies and programs that improve parental and caregiving leave and increase access to childcare;” and implementing “policies that support diversity, equity and inclusion and that target sexism and racism in medicine.”