Resilience Building Practices for Women Physicians

Abstract

Women now make up more than half of the physician workforce, but they are disproportionately plagued by burnout. Medicine is a fast-paced stressful field, the practice of which is associated with significant chronic stress due to systems issues, crowding, electronic medical records, and patient case mix. Hospitals and health care systems are responsible for mitigating system-based burnout-prone conditions, but often their best efforts fail. Physicians, particularly women, must confront their stressors and the daily burden of significant system strain when this occurs. Those who routinely exceed their cumulative stress threshold may experience burnout, career dissatisfaction, and second victim syndrome and, ultimately, may prematurely leave medicine. These conditions affect women in medicine more often than men and may also produce a higher incidence of health issues, including depression, substance use disorder, and suicide. The individual self-care required to maintain health and raise stress thresholds is not widely ingrained in provider practice patterns or behavior. However, the successful long-term practice of high-stress occupations, such as medicine, requires that physicians, especially women physicians, attend to their wellness. In this article, we address one aspect of health, resilience, and review six practices that can create additional stores of personal resilience when proactively integrated into a daily routine.

Keywords: burnout; disparity; resilience; sex differences; wellness; women's health.

FIG. 1.

A brief summary of Three Resilience Building Meditation Practices.