MedEd Studio: Stanford WellMD
In this episode, you meet a pioneer in the field of wellness in healthcare. Dr. Tait Shanafelt is the chief wellbeing officer at Stanford. Stanford was first in the US to address wellness on the organizational level. This was a truly significant change of thinking from focusing on how individual healthcare workers could tolerate and survive in a broken organization to actually start thinking about the organization in which human beings work.
Stanford Well MD was launched to drive system change and foster professional fulfillment in healthcare professionals. The need for system change in healthcare was recognized through research and evidence showing high levels of occupational distress and its impact on quality of care and patient experience.
Tokenism in wellness efforts can be avoided by creating senior positions with authority and resources to drive change. Creating a culture of wellness involves changing conversations and considering the impact on healthcare workers in decision-making. Stanford's wellness culture is manifested through performance metrics, funding for well-being improvement projects, and allocation of resources. Research is conducted to measure the effectiveness of specific interventions and overall well-being improvement.
Tait Shanafelt
Tait Shanafelt is a prominent physician and researcher specializing in hematology and oncology, particularly chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL). He is currently the Chief Wellness Officer at Stanford Medicine and the Director of the Stanford WellMD Center. Shanafelt is known for his extensive research on physician well-being and its impact on healthcare quality.