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Physician Wellness and Resilience: Narrative Prompts to Address Burnout explores 26 compelling narratives from practicing doctors and medical students as they share their personal and professional encounters in their own words.
List of contents
PART I Student life
1. Insight
Depression, career choice, identity management, privacy
2. Anxiety
Anxiety, help-seeking, privacy
3. Coping with Medical School Life
Work-life integration, perfectionism, failure, empathy
4. A Medical School Dean’s Perspective
Learning environment, career choice, role models
PART II Culture of Medicine
5. The Brunt of Anger
Medical hierarchy, bullying
6. Competition, Balance, and Happiness
Competition, suicide, prioritizing values
7. Suicide and Disenchantment
Suicide response and prevention, grief, stigma
PART III Practice Challenges
8. Medication Error
Medical errors, shame, humility, peer support
9. Commitment, Challenge, and Control
Resilience, setting boundaries, career change, life lessons
10. When Certainty Is Wrong
Sharing bad news with patients, when doctor is patient
11. Colleagues, Privacy, and Empathy
Privacy, workplace behavior, when doctor is patient
PART IV Career/Life Disruptions
12. Accident, Fear of Depression, and a Great Career
Depression, interrupted training, resilience, career choice, relative with mental illness
13. Childhood in Foster Care
Resilience, depression, help-seeking, relative with mental illness
14. From War-Torn Childhood to Life as a Foreign Medical Graduate
Resilience, role models, acculturation, racism
15. Empathizing with Mentally Ill People
Empathy, relative with mental illness, expressing emotions at work
PART V Women in Medicine
16. Infertile and Fulfilled
Fertility, resilience
17. Finding Balance with Kids and Career
Motherhood, women in medicine, giving bad news, insecurities at work
18. Motherhood in Training
Family planning, work-life integration, grief
19. Regrets and Dedication
Sex discrimination, bullying, infertility, fulfillment
PART VI COVID-19
20. Family Life in Covid Times
medicine as a calling, work-life integration, family support
21. The COVID-19 Experience
Uncertainty, witnessing death
22. COVID-19, the Aftermath
Burnout, depression, career change
PART VII Burnout
23. Leadership
Overwork, grief, suicide, leadership behavior
24. Pain Clinic Doctor’s Despair
Moral injury, patient behavior, leadership behavior, opioid crisis
PART VIII Addiction
25. Road to Recovery
Addiction, guilt and shame, accountability, recovery
26. Practicing Medicine in the Grasp of Addiction
Addiction, suicide attempt, accountability, recklessness, recovery
About the author
Pauline Davies is Professor of Practice and teaches human communication at Arizona State University. Specializing in cancer research outreach, she is also an award-winning former BBC science and health broadcaster.
Dr Cynthia M. Stonnington is an award-winning psychiatrist, educator, and wellness expert at the Mayo Clinic in Arizona. She directed the psychiatry and psychology department for ten years.
Summary
Physician Wellness and Resilience: Narrative Prompts to Address Burnout explores 26 compelling narratives from practicing doctors and medical students as they share their personal and professional encounters in their own words.
