FINDING AND MAINTAINING THE JOY IN WHAT WE DO: THE 2017 ANNUAL ADFM WINTER MEETING

John Franko; Ardis Davis; Amanda Weidner

doi:10.1370/afm.2081

“Joy and Effectiveness in the Work of Family Medicine: Now and in The Future” was chosen as the 2017 ADFM Winter Meeting theme to encourage department Chairs and Administrators to reflect on the important and meaningful work across the continuum of an academic department. Concern about the antithesis to joy and fulfillment—burnout—was front and center on the minds of all attendees during the Friday morning keynote session on joy in clinical practice led by Dr. Christine Sinsky and Dr. Mark Greenawald. Dr. Greenawald asked the key question of the conference, “Should we be satisfied with just not being burned out”? and then described the levels of function on a continuum from burnout, survival, fine, and well, up to thriving. He and Dr. Sinsky described ways to work on our health systems and clinical practice approaches to try and improve the institutional contributions to burnout. ADFM Chairs, Administrators, Senior Leaders and other attendees all contributed significantly through small group discussions on what we mean by joy, how we measure it, and how we maintain it. The substance of those discussions will be the focus of more work in ADFM over the year.

This theme was reflected in other program sessions which addressed clinical, educational, administrative, and scholarly functions, emphasizing personal and systems approaches that can assist in achieving the goal of being fulfilled and joyful in all our work.

Hope Wittenberg, CAFM Government Relations Director, and several ADFM member panelists conducted a hands-on session on finding joy in advocacy. This session concluded with attendees identifying one thing they will do when they go back home related to advocating on a local, regional, or national level during these unusual times in our nation’s history.
University of Michigan, UCSF, and Wake Forest University Chairs showcased a variety of clinical enterprise models being addressing population health.
Chair/Administrator teams from Medical College of Georgia at Augusta University and the University of Alabama College of Community Health Sciences shared ideas on the business perspectives they utilized when responding to significant challenges.
A panel discussion developed by the Building Research Capacity (BRC) initiative featured Chair/Administrator teams from Saint Louis University, University of Illinois at Chicago College of Medicine, and Virginia Commonwealth University, on how they partner to promote, develop, and manage research in their departments.
Chair and Administrator panelists from the Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine, the University of Missouri and the Uniformed Services University of Health Sciences led a robust discussion of and hands-on activity around succession planning. The room was arranged to allow attendees from departments to sit together to discuss the presented principles and begin to actively and intentionally plan to develop individuals in their department to take on leadership roles inside and outside of the home institution.
R. Shawn Martin, Senior Vice President, Advocacy, Practice Advancement and Policy at the American Academy of Family Physicians, shared some up-to-date information about the political climate and a variety of programs and initiatives, specifically addressing some questions and concerns around MACRA.
Additional learning, networking, problem solving, and fun were a result of structured and unstructured activities. Such activities included our Annual Dinner, leadership and administrators’ preconferences, sharing of ADFM’s data gathered this year and how it is being used, State and Regional Networking breakfasts, and Consultation and Topic breakfast sessions.

The culmination of the meeting was a very inspiring session on “joy in teaching,” focusing on mindfulness and reflective writing. Attendees were encouraged to “get out of our analytical brains” and be present in the moment. This was a perfect end to an excellent 4 days, leaving everyone in the room contemplative about ADFM, about the meeting, about their own roles and sources of joy, and about challenges and opportunities which lie ahead.

The conference succeeded in stimulating discussions and thoughts about the entire spectrum of work of academic departments—how we can be better at what we do and find joy and meaning in our daily tasks.