Introduction: The Fortify Resilience Initiative focuses on building and sustaining a culture of wellbeing in The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley (UTRGV) School of Medicine's Graduate Medical Education residency programs. To address the multitude of threats to physician wellness and mitigate the silent, but pernicious effects of burnout on these physician learners serving in the RGV, this initiative has strengthened existing wellbeing pathways while expanding additional solutions that work to sustain wellness and resilience. Methods/Project Description: This initiative maintains three key drivers (Access Strategy, Empowerment Initiatives, and System Redesign) that all work to address and enhance components central to wellbeing management. The premier driver provides continuous access to direct online clinical/coaching services, annual wellness check-ins, monthly live-online learning sessions with skill development practical labs to all medical residents and clinical faculty of the institution. The "Fortify Resilience" wellbeing mobile application, allowing users to periodically self-assess and receive suggestions to improve self-management has entered its pilot phase, while establishment of program-specific Wellness Committees through our focus group informed guide "Promoting Well-being & Preventing Ill-being within Program Committees: A Team Based Toolkit for Well-being Champions," continues as the project's second driver. A faculty development pathway to train faculty to full competency over current wellbeing methodologies is underway with an inaugural cohort, which aims at securing a lasting presence of institutional expertise, represents the third driver. Results/Outcomes: Following the introduction of these interventions, positive trends are observed in the individual wellbeing items of the annual provider wellness surveys for 2022 and 2023. Service utilization and attendance rates continue to grow per academic annum, with a rise in provider satisfaction rates, as insights into the adoption rates of individual medical specialties/program-specific responses to the interventions have been discerned through the project's rapid cycle quality improvement process. Conclusions: This initiative aims to signal a divergence from the practice of simply measuring the level of provider burnout present in the system to reinforce a focus on cultivating a systemic culture that advances the proponents of what actively and passively promotes provider wellbeing through prevention/promotion/protection intervention strategies targeted at individual, program, and system levels to address existing gaps that spread risk and vulnerability.
Salvador Arellano, Director, Medical Partnerships, Burrell Behavioral Health Salvador Arellano PsyD