Full Schedule

Benjamin Franklin stated, “Joy is not in things, it is in us.” Yet, rates of burnout in medical providers have increased. Finding joy in practice is even more challenging in view of the COVID pandemic along with continued social and racial injustice. Bodenheimer and Sinsky added to the Institute for Healthcare Improvement’s (IHI) Triple Aim by adding a 4^th aim: Improving the work life of health care providers, including clinicians and staff.[i] While there has been much focus on individual resilience strategies including mindfulness, eating well, and exercising, these strategies may amplify the feeling of being overwhelmed by adding to our to-do lists while away from work and putting more stress/responsibility on the individual. More attention needs to be paid to strategies that can strengthen our relationships with our patients, colleagues, and learners while at work.

This workshop will focus on sparking joy during the hours that occupy our wakeful moments throughout the week and most of the year: while at work.

After welcoming participants and introducing the agenda, participants will complete the PERMA Profiler[ii], a validated 23-question survey that measures overall well-being. We will then describe the PERMA framework[iii] (Positive Emotion, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning, and Accomplishment) for measuring joy in work. Participants will divide into 5 breakout rooms, each with 2 facilitators. For 15 min, participants will score their PERMA surveys and then discuss “what surprised them.” The small groups will return to the large group briefly in order to be re-randomized to another small group. For 15 min, participants will reflect on existing examples of joy in work, and think-pair-share by phone with a partner (cell phone numbers will be shared directly between pairs with chat function). After being re-randomized to the 3^rd small group, facilitators will use screen share and participants will use whiteboard as a group to devise strategies to foster joy in themselves, their patients, their colleagues, or learners utilizing the 5 elements of the PERMA framework.

After the breakout sessions, participants will return to the large group. The small groups will report out to the large group feasible ways to spark more joy at work using padlet through screen share by the facilitator. Next, the large group will continue to use padlet to identify barriers and solutions for sparks of joy. With these ideas in mind, individual participants will then have time to reflect and to draft and send an email to the workshop leader their own commitment to spark joy at work. Two weeks following the workshop, participants will receive a summary of all ideas generated in both the small and larger groups (sparks of joy that already exist, how to spark joy in others at work, new commitments to spark joy in work). Three months later, participants will receive a reminder email of the commitments they made to spark joy at work.

Timeline:
Didactic time: 20 min, Interactive time: 100 min
5 min Welcome (Hetzler)
10 min Participants take PERMA self-assessment (Nicklas)
15 min Introduce PERMA framework (Serwint)
05 min Introduction to small groups (Serwint)
45 min Breakout rooms on Zoom- 5 small groups (15 min each, 2 facilitators per group) (Facilitators: All)
1^st 15 min: Score PERMA self assessment and discuss “surprises” within small group
2^nd 15 min: Self reflection on examples joy in work (think-pair-share)
3^rd 15 min: Small group discussion of strategies to foster 5 elements of PERMA
15 min Large group report out using Padlet (shared screen) (Fenick)
10 min Large group barriers/solutions discussion using Padlet (shared
screen) (Nicklas)
10 min Individual commitment(s) (Gustafson)



[i] Bodenheimer, T., & Sinsky, C. (2014). From Triple to Quadruple Aim : Care of the Patient. Annals of Family Medicine, 12(6), 573–576. https://doi.org/10.1370/afm.1713.Center

[ii] Butler, J., & Kern, M. L. (2016). The PERMA-Profiler: A brief multidimensional measure of flourishing. International Journal of Wellbeing, 6(3), 1-48. doi:10.5502/ijw.v6i3.1

[iii] Seligman, M. (2011). Flourish. New York, NY: Free Press.