The leadership of Spectrum Healthcare Partners recognizes that its physicians share in the widespread burnout phenomenon affecting medical practitioners nationwide. This problem has the potential to impact physicians in their personal and professional lives, with adverse effects on personal, physical and mental health, the quality of clinical work, and engagement with their practices and patients.
Resilience coaching is an intervention aimed to improve physicians’ resilience, engagement with patients and colleagues, and a sense of professional attainment. The collaboration between coach and physician can provide a paradigm of self-care and self-efficacy, applied directly to the physician’s personal work and life circumstances, with sustainable benefits.
In response to this phenomenon, in 2017 Spectrum introduced a resilience coaching program.
How do you get connected to a resilience coach?
The goal of the resilience coaching program is to ensure that every physician experiencing burnout symptoms receives the benefits of resilience coaching. This is a self-referral program and is confidential.
Contact our program coordinator at gail.allen@spectrumhcp.com or 207.482.7812 to get started.
How does our program work?
Theory and research from the field of positive psychology were used to frame the resilience coaching intervention. The focus is on well-being. A randomized control study has validated the efficacy of the coaching intervention. Physicians receive six, sixty-minute confidential coaching sessions over the course of three months from a professionally certified coach. The first session is focused on creating the coach-to-physician relationship, assessing strengths and setting client-centered goals. The five remaining sessions are focused on topics and tools the physician can use, based on the first session’s plan. The first session is conducted in-person; all subsequent coaching sessions are conducted via phone.
What have participants identified as the main benefits of resilience coaching?
– Reduced stress and increased resilience
– Increased meaning and purpose of my work
– Identified my strengths and how to leverage them
– Collaborated more effectively with colleagues and management
– Better time and task management
– Improved self-care
What are participants saying?
“Coaching helped me deal with a severe problem which caused tremendous burnout in our office, resulting in improvements not just for myself but for other docs in my office.”
“Coaching helped me to achieve a laser focus on what elements of my work are most meaningful, and gave me the confidence to set different priorities and make different choices in my work.”
“I was able to tap into inherent satisfaction with the job even in times of stress and figure out how to gravitate toward flow experiences that would create greater satisfaction in the future.”
“I was able to see where and how I could create change for myself and others and were to realize I am not broken, the system is.”
