#BLUEPRINT FOR WELLNESS HOW TO#
#BLUEPRINT FOR WELLNESS PROFESSIONAL#

How do we do this? To expand on the oft quoted ice-skating analogy relating to the renowned hockey player Wayne Gretzky, we need to convene all voices of the House of Radiology to better understand the challenges, impacts and contributors, to define where our proverbial puck will be, and then to define a path that will guide us to meet that puck. Together, we can and must build a blueprint for wellness that will guide and sustain our efforts towards improved wellness. We certainly have the skilled team members, advocates, resources, voices, passions, and energy to do that, and we need to start now. As a medical subspecialty, we have the opportunity to change that now, and must. We have been playing wellness whack-a-mole by responding with tactics to each newly recognized symptom or contributor, rather than thinking strategically. So, where does that leave us today? For the past several years, we have responded to the epidemic of burnout by changing the conversation to a more positive focus on wellness, yet our many very well-intended efforts have been largely tactical, rather than strategic. The Great Resignation inspired the Great Exploration and Reshuffling, and now the Great Renegotiation-of why and how we work.

New challenges emerged, which have become our contemporary opportunities: supporting and sustaining remote teams and flexible work patterns, a staffing challenge like few can recall, rethinking productivity and compensation models, calls for greater transparency, wellness-driving compensation plans and reading environments, and reimagining what a day’s work should look like.

Yet the stress and symptoms of emotional exhaustion, detachment, disengagement, and disillusionment persisted, and a great resignation commenced.

#BLUEPRINT FOR WELLNESS PROFESSIONAL#

Conversations slowly started transforming from burnout to wellness, to professional fulfillment, and voices were now being listened to and heard. Practices slowly started listening to the voices of their team members. Our efforts have been diverse and well-intended: various manners of resilience-building have been explored, personal wellness strategies were introduced, organizational contributors were recognized, the value of high-functioning teams extolled, as was understanding of the complex preferences of our wonderful multicultural and multigenerational team members.

#BLUEPRINT FOR WELLNESS HOW TO#

There is no better time than now to define where we want to go, how to get there, and how to remove current and future obstacles along the way. Most certainly, we have started to move the radiology wellness dial-we have discovered what works and what doesn’t, we have started to recognize the spectrum of manifestations of stress, we have started to explore different personal and practice approaches to wellness, we have started to acknowledge the impact of effective leadership, communities and connections, of having voices heard, of removing the many pebbles from our shoes, and we have started to speak louder and louder about the need for a more organized approach. There have been broad-based recommendations for addressing the epidemic of languishing, which struck unexpectedly, followed by post-traumatic recovery efforts, which were never fully understood together, we’ve raised our voices at the so-called moral insults and associate injuries repeatedly cast in our direction. These efforts have had short-term impacts, at best. Many of these have been Band-Aid attempts to right perceived wrongs, to keep up with current trends, or to respond to newly recognized symptoms. Mitigation tactics have been tried-improving practice efficiency amid amassing volumes, personal wellness invocations in times of increased isolation, and efforts to cultivate individual and even practice resilience. The constellation of recognized detractors contributing to our widespread lack of wellness and professional fulfillment continues to grow, and will do so, until an effective and collective strategy is implemented.

The epidemic of stress and burnout among physicians in our imaging field continues unabated, with many commitments, remedies, websites, apps, financial resources, meetings, meals, committees, retreats, articles, and other tactics directed at mitigating the expanding repertoire of undesirable, harmful, and even tragic consequences.

Blueprint for wellness