The ACS recognizes the need to foster well-being, resilience, and work-life integration for all surgeons, regardless of their career stage, practice setting, specialty, and/or professional aspirations. Fostering the growth of both the surgical expertise and the person as a whole is paramount. We recognize that many components affect an individual’s emotional, occupational, physical, intellectual, financial, social, spiritual, and environmental well-being, both as a surgeon and as a human being. The College recognizes that surgeon well-being, directly and indirectly, affects patient care and that to ensure optimal patient care; surgeons need to understand and adapt to their environments to thrive.
Through education, resources, tools, and advocacy, the ACS fosters and encourages surgeons’ health and well-being to ensure the physical and mental strength necessary to support their personal and professional pursuits and to provide optimal patient care. We strive and commit ourselves to helping surgeons find satisfaction in their lives. The ACS advocates for worksite cultures that support optimal work-life integration for surgeons, create, and nourish opportunities for surgeons to flourish and thrive, and provide support leading to job fulfillment. The ACS commits to the following goals:
- Decrease the stigma around surgeon distress by providing education, resources, and tools for surgeons, program directors, and administrators.
- Address adverse effects of surgeon distress.
- Sustainable training models to promote resilience inherent in surgeons through education, resources, and tools.
- Increase work-life integration by supporting resources that aid individual surgeons and their communities.
- Advocate for systems-level change at the local, regional, national, and international levels within programs, organizations, hospitals, institutions, and governmental agencies on practices and policies that affect well-being and incorporate environmental changes that enable surgeons to thrive and flourish—both personally and professionally.
The College’s commitment to surgeon well-being is two-fold. The ACS commits to building and upskilling individual coping skills for surgeons alongside developing a long-term strategy to support systems-level changes in collaboration with systems stakeholders. The ACS commits to engaging surgeon well-being across all of its activities, expanding the availability of resources through internal and external collaborations and partnerships, and promoting research and education that enhances programs, interventions, and strategies that integrate well-being into all facets of a surgeon’s career and home environment.
