Surgeon Well-Being Coalition Expands Resources throughout Specialty

Each year, the ACS celebrates Surgeon Well-Being Month in January to highlight the College’s initiatives, resources, and advocacy for improving the welfare of surgeons’ minds and bodies. Now, the ACS is broadening its reach with the creation of a Surgeon Well-Being Coalition.

The Coalition currently has more than 40 surgical organization participants, supporting one another and collaboratively working to ensure the well-being of surgeons. It strives to create a collective voice that advocates for healthy, sustainable systems and practices that bring well-being into the day-to-day and beyond crisis management by:

• Sharing resources and best practices, supporting research, engaging in well-being initiatives, and leveraging infrastructure to benefit the well-being of all surgeons
• Bringing together all stakeholders, including practice, hospital, and university administrators to work together to address the systemic change needed to support surgeon well-being
• Removing roadblocks for surgeons who feel that they can no longer practice safely without professional assistance and expanding access to physician health programs
• Defining and sharing appropriate and effective well-being metrics to include in the ACS’s verification and accreditation programs

Many exciting initiatives already are underway as a result of an initial meeting in October. These include collating a living resource book of well-being resources from each member organization.

In the coming year, the group plans to standardize a definition of well-being as it applies to surgeons, develop surgeon-specific metrics to follow well-being over time, create robust well-being strategies, and advocate for surgeon support at all levels and after adverse outcomes or other major personal injuries.