Finding the Good in Those Roughest Days: A Re-dedication to Meaning and Purpose as a Key to Our Longterm Well-being

The current healthcare work environment for physicians encompasses significant staffing shortages.  At the same time, we are encountering higher and higher demands for care from patients of unprecedented levels of acuity. The ability of physicians to respond to these pressures and dangers of the pandemic and now the post-pandemic period has been impressive. Yet, many of us are now asking, how long can I keep up this pace? Can I manage the intensity of this daily work over the long haul? This session will focus on strategies for our own Human Sustainability; our ability to maintain physical and mental health without subverting our growth, generativity, and sense of impact. Through essays and storytelling, we will explore how to work through the grief of our work. In allowing for grief, we also then allow for the joy and fulfillment of our work to come through.

Dr. Clancy has been a national leader in medicine since 2001, servings as a Medical School Dean, as a University President and on a Task Force for the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine. For the past 5 years, he has focused on improving clinician well-being, the safety of the health workplace environment and the elimination of healthcare bureaucratic dead-ends. He has provided over 70 workshops for clinicians on well-ending. He also practices in rough clinical environment. He serves as a critical care psychiatrist, staffing a Level 1 Trauma Center and a quaternary medical center’s Intensive Care Units.