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Wellness

The Internal Medicine Residency program is committed to ensuring residents and teaching faculty remain physically and mentally healthy. Wellness is an important part of resident training and faculty supervision to reduce fatigue, ensure patient safety, and enhance resident and faculty development.

Psychological, emotional, and physical well-being are critical in the development of a competent, caring, and resilient physician and require proactive attention to life inside and outside of medicine. Well-being requires physicians to retain the joy in medicine while managing their own real-life stresses. Self-care and responsibility to support other members of the healthcare team are important components of professionalism. They are also skills that must be modeled, learned, and nurtured in the context of other aspects of residency training.

Stethoscope on a background X-ray images

Residents and faculty members are at risk for burnout and depression. Programs, in partnership with their sponsoring institutions, have the same responsibility to address well-being as other aspects of resident competence. Physicians and all members of the health care team share responsibility for the well-being of each other. A positive culture in a clinical learning environment models constructive behavior and prepares residents with the skills and attitudes needed to thrive throughout their careers.

The responsibility of the program, in partnership with the sponsoring institution, to address well-being must include efforts to enhance the meaning each resident finds in the experience of being a physician, including protecting time with patients, minimizing non-physician obligations, providing administrative support, promoting progressive autonomy and flexibility, and enhancing professional relationships.

Residents and faculty will be given the opportunity to attend medical, mental health, and dental care appointments, including those scheduled during their working hours.

Residents and faculty will have access to confidential, affordable mental health assessment, counseling, and treatment, including access to urgent and emergent care 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

The Internal Medicine Residency Program has a dedicated Wellness committee comprised of faculty and residents to guide and direct the residency toward resident and faculty total well-being.

Wellness Committee Faculty Members

Dasha Cowart, DO

Dasha Cowart, DO

Nicholas Keaton, MD

Nicholas Keaton, MD

Specific Internal Medicine Residency wellness activities are listed below:

Dedicated monthly wellness day to promote physician wellness through activities and various didactics.

Monthly wellness conferences to include:

  • Resiliency training
  • Fatigue mitigation/sleep deprivation
  • Depression screening
  • Substance use disorder
  • Stress management
  • Burnout

Monthly IM house staff council meetings to address resident concerns and elevate recommendations and suggestions to GMEC for program growth.

Resident and faculty awards

  • Monthly “Top Banana” faculty and resident performers
    • Selected by Program Director
  • Outstanding Resident Performance for the Quarter
    • Selected by IM clinical competency committee
  • Faculty of the Quarter
    • Selected by IM house staff council
  • Resident Teammate of the Quarter
    • Selected by IM house staff council
  • Annual Awards
    • Resident of the Year
    • Resident “Black Cloud” Award
    • Resident “Bleeding Heart” Award
    • Teaching Hospitalist of the Year
    • Teaching Specialist of the Year
    • Faculty Role Model Award

Monthly faculty development lectures/activities to advance faculty education on physician wellness.

Annual Internal Medicine Wellness Activities

  • GME welcome picnic
  • GME PGY-1 white coat ceremony
  • IM PGY-1 winter retreat
  • IM residency holiday party
  • IM PGY-1/2 spring retreat
  • IM end-of-year resident and faculty awards ceremony and dinner

Screening

Mental Health Screening – screening.mentalhealthscreening.org

Resources

Guided Meditations – uclahealth.org

The Free Mindfulness Project – freemindfulness.org

Uprise Flyer – Click to View

Essential Advice for Intern Year – Watch the video

Why Train at Memorial?

Memorial Hospital has been the premier medical center for the Mississippi Gulf Coast since 1946, with two locations to serve our community - our main campus in Gulfport, MS and our newest hospital in Stone County. We boast a culture committed to delivering the highest quality treatment and greater access to progressive services and care to our thriving community.

Memorial is one of the most comprehensive healthcare systems in the state, which means that wherever our patients are in life, Memorial has their best health in mind.

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Family Medicine
228-867-4968

Internal Medicine
228-822-6512

4500 Thirteenth Street
PO Box 1810
Gulfport, MS 39501

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