Chair's Message
Welcome to the first Department of Family Medicine newsletter for 2024. I realize it’s February, and the weather feels like March or April, but I will still wish everyone a Happy New Year. As we move into 2024, we continue to hear about the crisis in healthcare, and particularly the crisis in family medicine. I can barely listen to the radio, watch the news, read through my emails, or scroll social media without constantly being slapped in the face that Family Medicine is in a desperate and unsustainable state. There is no doubt there are significant challenges family physicians are facing – administrative burden, downloading of care from specialists, changing patient expectations, increasing overhead costs… the list can go on (and on!).
Within our Department we have just come through CaRMS interviews and medical students will soon be making lifelong career choices. We interviewed over 500 applicants who are interested in Family Medicine as a career. The students told us why they wanted to pursue family medicine and how fulfilling it would be. We touted why it is amazing to be a family physician and why Western would help make them into a great one. Then the interviews ended, and we likely reverted to hearing, feeling, and even delivering the crisis message.
In an actual, face-to-face conversation with a family physician colleague recently (yes! not over social media, not over email, not through quotes in a newspaper) he remarked how much he loved family medicine. He said he tries to highlight good things about family medicine to his residents, medical students, colleagues, and staff everyday. What a novel idea. This made me think about the model of Appreciative Inquiry – an asset-based approach to organizational and social engagement that uses questions and dialogue to help uncover existing strengths and advantages in communities, organizations, or teams (definition adapted from https://organizingengagement.org/models/appreciative-inquiry).
My teenage children complain… sometimes it feels like it’s all they do. The glass is seemingly always half empty. Just as I encourage them to do, I have realized I need to take my own advice and follow the lead of my more positive colleague. I need to alter my own narrative and add in some appreciative inquiry. I can acknowledge not everything is desperate in Family Medicine. I have rewarding and satisfying encounters with patients and families all the time. However, I think I am more likely to come home and ruminate on the stressful thing that happened at work instead of feeling good about what went well. Great care happens everyday, patients are thankful everyday, our work as Family Physicians makes a difference everyday… we need to mix in some of the good narrative more often.
Perhaps trying to be more outwardly positive seems like a big step – and it may be depending on where you are starting from. But maybe responding to the negative without piling on, is a place to start. I recently read about strategies to help in positively influencing and responding the negative messages we often hear. It requires awareness and effort. It involves acknowledging (not dismissing) concerns and criticism. It involves listening and sorting out facts and correct information from misinformation and misunderstanding. It involves respectful, constructive dialogue that could counterbalance some of the negative to uncover ideas and possible improvements.
I don’t dispute we have a huge boulder to roll up the mountain to improve family medicine, primary care, and the health care system, but that shouldn’t prevent us from identifying, and appreciating, the great things we do, see, and feel everyday. The boulder will take time, but small bits of appreciation may make the pebble in your shoe a little less irritating.
So, my New Year’s resolution is to do my part to add to the narrative in a positive way. Maybe there’s even a chance to influence the narrative. Even if I can’t make a difference on Facebook or twitter, it will make a difference for me, and hopefully a few people around me – and that matters.
Lastly, thank you for the great thing you did today.
As always, your comments and feedback are welcome. Connect with me @FMChairChief on Twitter/X or at smckay28@uwo.ca.
