Medical Learners' Wellness: Systemic Perspective

Abstract

Health and well-being of medical learners' is important in itself and is a necessary precondition to good patient care. Medical learners suffer from high levels of mental illhealth due to challenging demands and pressurized learning/ work environments. These factors are aggravated by learners' tendency to avoid seeking help and support when unwell or under pressure and by a perceived stigma among them about mental illness. Many pressures that threaten learners' well-being as well as the health and effectiveness of the organisations in which they learn are systemic. While certain initiatives have been implemented to improve the ability of medical learners' to withstand pressure, fundamentally many of the modifiable risk factors for poor mental health and wellbeing have not been addressed. It is becoming increasingly clear that successful interventions to tackle learners' mental ill-health would have to be multidimensional, aimed at multiple levels and involve multiple stakeholders. Leaders of organizations designing interventions must improve learning/ work cultures to emphasize the importance of looking after one's own health, to normalize discussions of struggle in the context of educational/ work challenges, and to understand how and when to seek help. Finally, it may be mentioned that the evidence base for individual and systemic interventions to improve medical learners' well-being and mental health is very limited, hence there is need for much research to help develop new approaches to medical learners' mental health and wellbeing.