Article Text
PDF
Statistics from Altmetric.com
Biography
Jennifer Ramsey, MD, MS, is the inaugural Wellness Officer for the Cleveland Clinic’s Respiratory Institute, the institute housing the front-line departments of critical care, infectious disease and pulmonary medicine. Clinically, she specialises in Critical Care and Palliative Medicine. She is an assistant professor in the Department of Medicine, Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine of Case Western Reserve University. She served as associate programme director of the Cleveland Clinic Internal Medicine residency programme for nearly 4 years, creating and delivering highly interactive, discussion-based curriculum regarding aspects of the physician experience and won several teaching awards for this innovative work. She serves as a reviewer for the journal Medical Education.
First and foremost, are there any key leadership messages you want to get out to our readership?
The crisis of the COVID-19 pandemic has shattered the ‘old normal’ of medicine, and amid the rubble, we are surprised to see healing and regrowth in physicians’ emotional welfare. The pandemic has shifted the medical profession’s focus away from performance metrics and towards creativity, collaboration and community building. Physician burnout has dissolved as we have rediscovered meaning in our work, our power to make change and belonging in our profession. Right now, individual physicians are needed, not for data entry but for ideas to outwit this chaos, brave hearts to answer the call of the sick and devotion to fellow healthcare workers. Right now, physicians feel important and heard. Physicians are connected to colleagues and leaders in ways we have not been in recent past. Amid the destruction of the pandemic, we have been given a ‘reset’ button on the crisis of physician burnout. My message is that as we rebuild after the pandemic, it will be important to rebuild in ways which continue to offer fulfilment, purpose and camaraderie in the practice of medicine. We should begin planning that rebuild now.
Tell us a little bit about your leadership role and how it is changing as a result of the pandemic.
The Cleveland Clinic’s Respiratory Institute houses the departments of …