Resident wellness

The strength of our residency program comes from the people who comprise it. Anesthesiology residency is demanding, and the relationships residents build with one another are an important part of navigating those challenges. Our residents develop close friendships throughout training and support one another both inside and outside of the hospital.

Residents frequently spend time together outside of work, whether gathering for dinner, exploring Chicago, celebrating milestones, or simply decompressing after a busy week. Significant others, families, and friends are often part of these gatherings as well. In addition to these resident-driven activities, our program supports resident well-being through a variety of organized wellness and social events, including seasonal celebrations, family-friendly gatherings, and resident retreats. Together, these experiences foster a strong sense of community and camaraderie that extends well beyond the operating room and helps residents thrive both personally and professionally throughout training.

Chicago provides an incredible backdrop for residency, offering world-class restaurants, arts and culture, professional sports, outdoor spaces, and diverse neighborhoods. Residents live throughout the city and surrounding suburbs, allowing them to choose the environment that works best for their individual circumstances.

We also recognize that residents' lives and priorities evolve throughout training. Our program strives to support residents as individuals, including those who are starting or raising families, navigating major life events, or balancing responsibilities outside of medicine.

 

Our program leadership is committed to creating an environment in which residents feel comfortable speaking openly about their training experience. We maintain an open-door policy and encourage residents to bring forward questions, concerns, suggestions, and ideas at any time. Residents have multiple opportunities to communicate directly with program leadership, both through regularly scheduled meetings and informally throughout the year.

We also recognize that residents may not always feel comfortable raising a concern directly. For that reason, residents have access to multiple mechanisms for providing confidential or anonymous feedback and reporting concerns. Maintaining these different avenues is important to ensure that every resident has a voice and can raise concerns in the manner that feels most appropriate to them.

 

Resident feedback is one of the most important drivers of change within our program. Many of the changes we have made over the past several years have come directly from resident suggestions and concerns. We actively seek feedback through resident meetings, evaluations, surveys, individual conversations, and other formal and informal channels.

Anesthesiology residency is inherently challenging, and we do not believe that "challenging" has to mean unnecessarily difficult. Our goal is to continually examine how we teach, schedule, communicate, and support our residents. When there is an opportunity to improve the resident experience without compromising the rigor and quality of training, we want to identify it and act on it.

We view our residents as partners in the continued development of the program. Our program is not static. It continues to evolve based on the needs of our residents, changes within our specialty, and the lessons we learn together each year.

 

The Employee Assistance Program (EAP) is a confidential resource available to residents through Advocate Health. The EAP provides support for a wide range of personal and professional concerns, including stress, anxiety, emotional well-being, family and parenting challenges, and the development of healthy coping strategies.

We encourage residents to take advantage of these resources when needed and recognize that seeking support should not create an additional scheduling burden. The program works with residents to accommodate appointments and appropriate follow-up care whenever possible.