- Lounge: This is meant to be a calm space where you can reflect and focus your energy. It is meant to be an inspiring, clean, and quiet place for solitude and reflection. Respect your colleagues need for a thoughtful retreat zone as well.
- Commonly used hospital numbers: Link to the laminated card
- Get two hours of sunlight each week (but wear your sunblock!)
- Consider buying a light box to combat Seasonal Affective Disorder. Most people use them for 30 minutes in the morning. Don’t use it at night; it will keep you up!
- Safety Escorts (need link to security contact)
- Active housestaff council housestaffcouncil@cooperhealth.edu
- Life at the Coop blog
- Support sessions: We have started regularly scheduled support sessions where residents can share their war stories. This shared experience of storytelling among peers helps residents cope with feelings, doubts, and challenges. Closed-door, resident-only gatherings can ensure a safe outlet for residents to discuss their struggles. Focusing on stories of vulnerability rather than heroism helps overwhelmed new residents to feel reassured that people who are now thriving have gone through similar experiences. Make storytelling a ritual, at a set time each month. As soon as one person starts sharing a story, it’s a floodgate and others start to open up.
“The coping strategies associated with a higher degree of emotional exhaustion include keeping stress to oneself, concentrating on what to do next, and going on as if nothing happened.”
Lemaire and Wallace: Not all coping strategies are created equal: A mixed methods study exploring physicians’ self-reported coping strategies. BMC Health Services Research 2010 10:208.
Lemaire and Wallace: Not all coping strategies are created equal: A mixed methods study exploring physicians’ self-reported coping strategies. BMC Health Services Research 2010 10:208.
- Here are some examples of questions you can ask about common shared emotional experiences:
- Did you ever have doubts that you weren’t right for medicine or that medicine wasn’t right for you?
- When was a time you were intimidated by an issue of illness, patient death, or relations with a patient’s family members?
- Describe a time when you felt like you were sacrificing your personal well-being for medicine. What were some of your coping strategies?
- Describe a situation when you were really unsure or not confident about what the right thing to do was. How did you deal with it?
- Big Brother/Sister systems: Cohort systems with mentoring among residents who are closer to the experience than faculty are a great source of support.