Presenters
Summary
Burnout is a national health crisis (Noseworthy et al., 2017), with PCP burnout rates ranging from 13.5-60% (Abraham, Zheng, & Poghosyan, 2019). Provider burnout is adversely associated with patient care, provider wellbeing, and organizational outcomes (West et al., 2018). In 2018, the National Academy of Medicine launched an Action Collaborative to advance initiatives to improve clinician wellbeing. Additionally, wellness is an increasing area of emphasis in medical education (AMA, 2018). Practice environment is the most common predictor of PCP burnout (Abraham et al., 2019). Modifiable environmental factors associated with lower burnout include defined team structures, goal-directed solution seeking, mutual support, and consistent, straightforward communication (Abraham et al., 2019; Salas, 2018). Simply put, teamwork is a foundation for building and sustaining resilient and effective primary care practice environments (Salas, 2018). As featured in Dr. Belinda Fu’s CFHA conference plenary (2019), medical improv is “an emerging field in which the principles and training techniques of improvisational theatre are used to improve cognition, communication, and teamwork in the field of medicineâ€
Objectives
- Define medical improv, including key tenets
- Identify overlap across key tenets of medical improv and effective, resilient primary care practice environments
- Practice basis improv games that can be readily integrated into primary care teams to promote effective teamwork, resilience, and lower burnout
