Physician Suicide Prevention and the Ethics and Role of a Healing Community: An American College of Physicians Policy Paper
Matthew DeCamp, MD, PhD, and Mark Levine, MD, for the ACP Ethics, Professionalism and Human Rights Committee
Suicide is a major global public health issue, and, in recent years, there has been increasing recognition of the problem of physician suicide. Because suicide is a complex problem, actions aimed at preventing suicide must occur at the individual, interpersonal, community, and societal levels. The medical community has an obligation to foster a culture that supports education, screening, and access to mental health treatment, beginning at the earliest stages of medical training.
What to Do When Someone Is at Risk
This short guide from the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention provides a framework on how to talk to someone about their mental health.
Promoting Collaborative Learning Environments for Well-Being
How can we create collaborative learning environments? What happens when a peer is in distress? This module discusses how positive social interaction, a culture of safety, and team-based care can support well-being during residency. Learn how to recognize and respond compassionately to signs of burnout in yourself or your peers.
Self-Compassion Guided Practices and Exercises
Free and Downloadable Self-Compassion Guided Meditations and Exercises
Test How Self-Compassionate You Are
Physician Foundation 2021 Survey of America's Physicians—COVID-19 Impact Edition: A Year Later
The Physicians Foundation's 2021 Survey of America's Physicians sought to understand the breadth of COVID-19's impact on physicians and their patients, colleagues, and practices.
ACP Well-being Champion Library of Interventions
ACP's new Library of Well-being Interventions for Well-being Champions and ACP chapter leaders can assist Well-being Champions in their mission of battling burnout and increasing professional fulfillment in their chapters. Curated resources are grouped into categories that include advocacy; peer support; diversity, equity, and inclusion; organizational interventions; and more. These interventions are easy to implement and can help you with your ACP chapter work.
View here! (Must be logged in to ACP Online.)
Nine Recommended Practices for Workplace Suicide Prevention
In 2010, the National Action Alliance for Suicide Prevention established a Workplace Task Force to assist with the implementation of the National Strategy for Suicide Prevention. The Nine Recommended Practices for Workplace Suicide Prevention includes videos and other multimedia resources.
General Team Care Toolkit
ACP has developed this toolkit to share best practices and real-life examples of successful team-based clinical care models that include internal medicine physicians working with nurse practitioners, physician assistants, and other members of the clinical care team. This toolkit includes resources to help foster productive and purposeful internal medicine teams.
Implementing and Sustaining Change Efforts
The ACP Advances Quality Improvement health care curriculum offers a practical, stepwise approach that guides you through each stage of the quality improvement journey from establishing the “what” and “why” for change to implementing and sustaining change. This online curriculum, developed by physicians for physicians and their teams, is offered as a series of four modules. The curriculum focuses on giving clinicians the autonomy and control to decide what they want to improve and how they want to implement change so that they feel the work is meaningful and addresses gaps that matter. This promotes a culture of continuous improvement and clinician well-being, which are essential ingredients for sustainability.
Back to the September 17, 2021 issue of ACP IM Thriving