Faculty and Resident Perspectives of the Complexity of Wellness Program Implementation: A Qualitative Exploration

Developing and implementing a wellness curriculum in a family medicine residency program is a complex process. We developed and implemented a new wellness curriculum in line with the national wellness conversation with a focus on the allocation of dedicated resources, the use of evidence-informed interventions, and the goal to be responsive to the feedback of both residents and residency leadership. Our research aim was to better understand the complexity of wellness curriculum implementation with a focus on identification of challenges to implementation.

We developed a wellness program with structured curricular elements initially focused on evidence-informed skill development that iterated after year 1 to include more process-oriented elements. For the years 2016-2019 we collected and analyzed qualitative, open-ended survey questions, anonymous resident curriculum feedback, and faculty observation forms to assess resident and faculty perspectives on the new curriculum.

One hundred eighty-three survey invitations were sent with 122 total responses (66.7% response rate). Forty-eight of 56 residents responded to at least one survey. We analyzed responses along with the additional qualitative data that revealed several themes impacting the work of residency wellness curriculum implementation. These included how to manage curricular time, where the locus of control for the curricular content resides, and how residents and faculty differ in their definitions of wellness.

We believe programs will be well positioned if they further investigate the complex structures at play that influence residency wellness, including both systemic factors and individual and community level interventions, and design curriculum that is well-defined, includes essential elements, and is informed by resident participation.