Well-being requires residents retain the joy in medicine while managing their own real life stresses. We value our residents’ well-being as a critical component of their training and education. Our program is motivated to mitigate burnout among urology trainees, help them deliver better care for our patients, and make meaningful contributions as leaders in the field of urology. Urology has been cited as having highest burnout and lowest satisfaction with work-life balance among other medical specialties. These statistics include our urology trainees in recent literature. Our goal is to address these concerns by offering residents the tools required to achieve professional and personal success.
Our urology residency wellness program is centered around multiple domains of wellness, nurturing the body, mind, spirit, and humanity. These domains include: physical health, mental health, social connection, work-life integration, and humanitarianism. We conduct events centered around these domains throughout each academic year, including: yoga and spinning classes, social gatherings at faculty homes, cooking classes, meditation and mindfulness workshops, mental health/counseling seminars, contributing to our community through nonmedical service, and more. We emphasize the importance of finding a sense of purpose in daily life, tying the goals of urologic training with the goals of personal well-being. In the words of Friedrich Nietzsche, amidst life’s challenges, “He [or she] who has a why to live can bear almost any how.” We find it imperative to foster a culture of wellness and provide tools for our residents to combat burnout as we continue to study the battle against physician burnout and delineate a roadmap for progress.
