Jan. 22, 2024 — For many, the beginning of a new year brings new opportunities for growth and reflection. At the UF College of Medicine, all faculty members, housestaff and postdocs now have access to an easy-to-use tool aimed at improving their work-life well-being.

The Well-Being Index, a tool initially piloted by residents and fellows in 2022 that allows participants to better understand their current level of distress or wellness, expanded its access to include physician faculty in 2023, before becoming available to non-physician faculty and postdocs this month.

“With our researchers especially, we don’t have as much direct input from them,” said Lisa Merlo, Ph.D., M.P.E., a professor of psychiatry and director of wellness programs for the College of Medicine. “As we did for our trainee and physician faculty populations, we’re now crowdsourcing from the people on the front lines in the lab to let us know their challenges and their needs so we can better address those moving forward.”

Individuals who sign up to use the Well-Being Index can complete a short, confidential questionnaire anywhere from once a month to every six months, which includes questions about work-life balance, burnout, fatigue and more. The tool takes about a minute to sign up and another minute to complete.

Along with receiving feedback comparing their results to peers, those who use the tool receive an individually-tailored list of local and national resources to address their needs. These include resources to support physical, emotional, financial, professional and relationship wellbeing, as well as to address concerns related to stress, fatigue, substance use and psychological distress.

Importantly, the tool also provides anonymized, aggregate data to college leadership that is used to target organizational interventions to improve well-being.

Thanks to responses received from hundreds of trainees and physician faculty, several improvements have been implemented or are underway across the college to improve the well-being of college community members, including:

• Greater access to primary care for housestaff, with two successful “GYN for GME” clinics hosted in the fall that served dozens of residents and fellows, and more planned for the spring, as well a proactive effort in Community Health & Family Medicine clinics to schedule residents who self-identified as having difficulty establishing care
• An upcoming GME workshop to address ongoing needs for program leadership and trainees across the college
• New access to free, on-site counseling services for faculty and residents, with the psychologist to be based in the Communicore Building
• Rebuilding and enhancing the Care for Colleagues program, which provides trained peer support for clinicians after difficult workplace events
• Pilot programs using generative artificial intelligence to help streamline EPIC documentation and to reduce time spent responding to MyChart messages

In addition to facilitating the implementation of these improvements, Merlo meets with unit leaders on a case-by-case basis to address challenges specific to their team, such as connecting trainees with local experts who can offer skill-building opportunities to navigate the physical demands of their work and manage patient caseloads more efficiently.

The more people who use the Well-Being Index, Merlo said, the more tailored projects can be for trainees and faculty at the college.

“We’re hoping we can increase the number of people using the tool,” she said, “because that’s when we can use the results most effectively to address the most pressing needs.”