In this session, we will introduce the Project on the Good Physician, which aims to develop the first national, longitudinal study of the moral and professional formation of American physicians over the course of their medical training. Specifically, we will present qualitative findings from the Project’s latest article, which highlight the importance of using a life-course approach when studying medical student well-being. We argue that initiatives to reduce stress and burnout should extend beyond the immediate medical school context and should invite students to consider how past challenges might become future sources of resilience.
Presenter Bios
Dr. John Yoon is an Assistant Professor of Medicine at the University of Chicago, and Assistant Program Director for the Internal Medicine Residency Program at Mercy Hospital & Medical Center. He is an academic hospitalist, clinical ethicist, and medical educator with research interests in the field of virtue ethics, moral psychology, and the moral and professional formation in medical education. He maintains a faculty affiliation with the Program on Medicine and Religion, MacLean Center of Clinical Medical Ethics, and the Bucksbaum Institute for Clinical Excellence. He was co-investigator on the Project on the Good Physician, a longitudinal study of medical students funded by the New Science of Virtues Project at the University of Chicago. As Senior Faculty Advisor for the Hyde Park Institute, he helps direct the Emerging Scholars Cohort program in Bioethics in which pre-medical undergraduates and medical students interact with role model physicians throughout the country.
Dr. Tania M. Jenkins is an assistant professor at Temple University in the department of sociology. She received her Ph.D. in Sociology from Brown University in May 2016 and worked as a Canadian Institutes of Health Research postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Health and Social Sciences at the University of Chicago from 2016-2017. Dr. Jenkins’ research interests lie within medical sociology, the sociology of professions, health, medical and scientific ethics, social status and inequality, and qualitative methodologies. More specifically, her scholarship focuses on professional dynamics within the medical profession that can shape experiences of inequality and wellbeing among physicians. Dr. Jenkins is currently writing a book (under contract with Columbia University Press) based on her doctoral research, which explores the emergence of status inequalities within the American medical workforce between US-trained and non-US trained physicians. Her current research focuses on physician mental health and explores the complex organizational, professional, and gendered factors that can contribute to an unhealthy physician workforce. Dr. Jenkins’ research has been funded by the National Science Foundation, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, as well as the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and has appeared in Social Science & Medicine, the American Journal of Public Health and Health, among others. It has also received several awards, including the Roberta G. Simmons Outstanding Dissertation in Medical Sociology Award from the American Sociological Association.