Virtual Journal Club--Week of August 15

One more post about Resilience this month, because it's not only important to us, but also to our patients. Many of us, along with the vast majority of our patients, count spiritual beliefs and practices among our first line coping strategies when facing crisis or stress. For many, it is also a "maintenance" strategy for daily life. If you look again at the Milestones posted this month, specifically PROF1, thread A, you see that being able to display sensitivity for the different beliefs and points of view of others is basically founded on having a capacity for self-reflection and an awareness of one's own cultural background.

I post a couple of papers for this week which demonstrate the effectiveness of spirituality as a method to increase our own resilience and manage the day-to-day wear and tear of residency. With this I am reminded that (with all due respect to Michael Phelps and Usain Bolt) life is a marathon, not a sprint. It behooves us to exercise self care which is sustainable over the long haul. Consider your own spiritual beliefs and practices--that which connects you with something greater than yourself and which transcends the mundane moments.

Spirituality&Well-being
Burnout&Spirituality

I was struck a couple of years ago by the following Walt Whitman poem. (Yes, it was from my year of binge-watching "Breaking Bad". I confess.) Nonetheless, it is a challenge to us that we might break off now and then from the constant flow of 1s and 0s that make up our daily life to take a moment to reflect on the wonder of it all.

When I heard the learn’d astronomer, 

When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me, 

When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them, 

When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room, 

How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick, 

Till rising and gliding out I wander’d off by myself, 

In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time, 

Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.