Following the National Academy of Medicine’s (NAM) announcement in February 2021 of the extension of its Action Collaborative on Clinician Well-Being and Resilience (Clinician Well-Being Collaborative) through 2022, U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy joins the initiative as the fourth co-chair in its new phase.
“As a member of the profession, I want to commend the National Academy of Medicine for acknowledging the seriousness of clinician burnout and determining a path forward to addressing it,” said Dr. Murthy. “I’m excited to work with the NAM Clinician Well-Being Collaborative at a moment where we have a greater opportunity than ever to support our nation’s health care workers. I am hopeful about the Collaborative not only in developing a strategy to advance clinician well-being through and beyond COVID-19, but also in bringing policymakers, the private sector, and the public together around action on this priority. We can emerge even stronger than before the pandemic – for the sake of our clinicians and patients.”
Dr. Murthy brings to the Clinician Well-Being Collaborative an established track record of dedication to the clinician community, from his agenda as the 19th Surgeon General of the United States on addressing chronic stress and cultivating well-being, to his time caring for thousands of patients and training hundreds of medical students and residents. He joins the current leadership of the Clinician Well-Being Collaborative, Victor Dzau, president of the NAM, Darrell Kirch, president emeritus of the Association of American Medical Colleges, and Thomas Nasca, president and chief executive officer of the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education.
“The Clinician Well-Being Collaborative was established as a public-private partnership to bring together diverse groups around the common goal of addressing clinician burnout. We are grateful for Vivek’s commitment to this issue which will benefit from his significant insights into the well-being of caregivers, and his time spent listening to frontline clinicians – especially their struggles during this parallel pandemic of clinician burnout during COVID-19,” said Dr. Dzau. “As a co-chair, Vivek joins the Collaborative’s leadership, membership, and network during a phase of reinforced commitment to make lasting change for the nation’s caregivers.”
The Clinician Well-Being Collaborative also set its 2021-2022 working groups:
- The Working Group on A National Strategy for Clinician Well-Being aims to create a national strategy for clinician well-being by mobilizing and sustaining the engagement, resources, and accountability of key health care stakeholders.
- The Working Group on Implementing Tools to Improve Clinician Well-Being aims to catalyze the uptake of evidence-based practices and the implementation of tools to support health care leaders in improving clinician well-being on the frontlines of care.
- The Working Group on Navigating the Impacts of COVID-19 on Clinician Well-Being aims to support the healthcare workforce during the pandemic and to apply emerging lessons from COVID-19, with continuous learning and feedback loops to develop long-term approaches.
The three groups will meet during this phase to advance and coordinate these charges. In addition, the Collaborative will lead efforts to promote clinician well-being as a priority for the health ecosystem and conduct sustainability planning for this ongoing movement. The Collaborative will continue to pursue a systems approach to advancing clinician well-being, center equity in its activities, engage with health care leadership, elevate data and metrics, and address stigma.
Launched in 2017, the Clinician Well-Being Collaborative is a network of organizations committed to reversing trends in clinician burnout. Over more than four years, the Collaborative has made progress in:
- Raising the visibility of clinician distress, anxiety, burnout, depression, and suicide
- Improving baseline understanding of challenges to clinician well-being
- Advancing evidence-based, multidisciplinary solutions to improve patient care by caring for the caregiver
View a list of current sponsors of the Clinician Well-Being Collaborative, as well as our over 200 network organizations. The Collaborative will continue to host public meetings over the next couple years. For more information or to register to receive updates, visit nam.edu/CW.
For questions, contact ClinicianWellBeing@nas.edu.
