Beyond the Grind: "Rest is Resistance" in Health Professions Education

Rooted in spiritual energy and centered in Black liberation, Afrofuturism, and feminism, Hersey's "Rest is Resistance" framework encourages deliberate rest practices as a personal necessity and a form of political resistance. Inspired by her work, we are a group of health professions education scholars from minoritized backgrounds using our lived experiences to illustrate the application of our "Rest is Resistance" framework. The demands of academic medicine, defined by productivity in clinical, scholarly, and educational domains, combined with personal obligations, run counter to rest. Enduring long hours and pushing oneself to exhaustion imply that needing to rest is a sign of weakness, and this so-called "grind culture" in medicine is pervasive. The expectations of a culture of self-sacrifice and dedication come at a cost to mental health and self-care. Minoritized faculty and trainees disproportionately experience the negative consequences of these expectations, including mental and racial battle fatigue. We introduce "Rest is Resistance"-a deliberate and necessary act of self-preservation against capitalism and structural injustices-and offer practices for individuals in the health professions to consider. The call for rest is not relegated to just physically resting our bodies. Rather, our call for rest is used metaphorically as a form of political, spiritual, and cultural resistance against oppressive systems, particularly capitalism and white supremacy, to promote a conscious slowing to reclaim individual agency and humanity. We hope that introducing "Rest is Resistance" as a framework in health professions education will promote well-being and support minoritized health care professionals and trainees, in particular, so that they can be fully present and create a sustainable healthcare culture that values everyone.