Wednesday Wellness: The Imperfection Sessions
Advisor: Dr. Will Bynum
Student Lead: Anna Kulawiec
On Wednesday, February 21, 2024, students from various of the health professions education (HPE) programs joined a Zoom session while others attended a “watch party” in Classroom 3 of the Trent Semans building, on the topic of “’Mediating’ our personal and professional lives.” The session was part of a series of talks called “The Imperfection Sessions,” which aim to cultivate an environment of vulnerability with the intent of humanizing the health professional experience.
Anna Kulawiec, MS3 and lead for The Imperfection Sessions, welcomed the audience and the panelists before explaining that the traditional idea of “work-life balance” may not quite fit the goal of busy health professionals who love what they do to the point that they may actually derive joy and satisfaction from being at work. She welcomed Dr. Will Bynum, expert on health professional well-being, burnout mitigation, and alternatives to shame, and the three panelists who had agreed to attend the session despite its timing at 7 p.m. on a Wednesday night: Dr. Ryan Slauer (PGY5, Medicine-Psychiatry residency); Dr. Lisa Criscione-Schreiber (internist, rheumatologist, and Vice Chair for Education in the Department of Medicine); and Dr. Sarah Eckstein (PGY3, Medicine-Psychiatry residency).
Each panelist provided personal, real, authentic information about their own life, value, and efforts to adhere to them – while offering anecdotes of real challenge as they have worked to navigate authenticity, values congruence, and well-being. Though their stories will stay in the confidential space in which they were offered, our panelists offered sound advice:
- Pay attention to what makes you “you”
- Learn to set boundaries to maintain your own sense of self, if necessary
- Choose values-congruent projects and do things in line with your values
- “It doesn’t matter how smart you are if you aren’t compassionate”
- “We are just a bunch of people trying to do our best every day”
- No matter how busy you are, you can always go outside for five minutes
Participants left the session feeling inspired, awed, and extremely grateful for the generous contributions of the panelists as well as the expert and empathic moderation by Dr. Bynum and organization by Anna Kulawiec – while looking eagerly forward to the next Imperfection Session, at a date to be determined and hopefully in-person with an interprofessional panel.