CIPC Blog

This blog post is authored by a graduate of our 2014 “Primary Care Behavioral Health” course.  Many of our former students go on to do significant work in the healthcare field.  Dr. Cherepanov’s experience includes global mental health work in Chernobyl, Chechnya, Kosovo, and Liberia.  She now works as lead clinician for refugee services at Lynn Community Health Center—one of CIPC’s long-term partners in integration training.

During public health complex emergencies (CE), healthcare workers play a crucial role. This work can be rewarding as it reminds health professionals about their mission and purpose. But just like “a perfect storm,” CE disrupts the fabric of community life, and the responders are subjected to the same ailments as their patients (Cherepanov, 2019). When responding to international CEs, humanitarians accumulated a great deal of experience dealing with extreme work stresses. This experience offers a valuable insight into the psychological challenges the frontline healthcare workers face during the pandemic and the best practices for managing them. 

This post first appeared in January 2021 in the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies.

Current research suggests that Medical Group Visits (MGVs) address the well-known triple aim: improving the experience of care, improving the health of populations, and reducing per capita costs.  But what about the quadruple aim, which adds improved clinician experience?

Clinician burnout, especially during the pandemic, is a serious concern for US healthcare delivery.  Talented and dedicated clinicians are leaving the profession and there is mounting proof that when clinicians are over-stressed there are negative consequences for patient care. 

Read the post by clicking on the title

The pandemic takes a toll on providers, caregivers, and clinicians who care for those afflicted.  CICP faculty member Dr. Paula Gardiner shares a ten-minute meditation practice that anyone can do to provide some self-compassion. More>

Stress is universal and a part of our everyday lives.  Is all stress harmful? Can we learn to accommodate stress and make more skillful choices about how we respond to this inevitable part of our lives?  

Read what Dr. Runyan wrote to our family medicine residents by clicking on the title.

What you think might be fostering connections to others may actually be amplifying your own critical voice or taking you out of the present moment, hijacking your attention away from your physical company.

Self-care and mindfulness techniques help patients cope with lives that leave them exhausted and burnt out. 

PCPs might model that self-care in their own struggles to stay afloat in a punishing healthcare system.

This is Part 2 of a 3-part blog on physician burnout.

Medicine boasts a “find it and fix it” (ideally as quickly and as painlessly as possible) mentality. However, changing and fixing systems is as, if not more, complicated than human beings and when things are going wrong, rarely is it one specific fix that can address all the issues. 

Recently, one of our family doctors posted a link to an article in the New England Journal of Medicine about physician burnout, a recently hot topic purporting epidemic levels of physician burnout with not only personal impact but also patient care implications. A nerve was touched.