Nguyet-Cam Vu Lam, M.D, FAAFP, Program Director, Bethlehem Family Medicine Residency at St. Luke’s University Health Network was recently selected to serve on the Association of Family Medicine Residency Directors’ (AFMRD) new Program Director (PD) Wellness Task Force.
The task force was formed because AFMRD members and their colleagues have experienced significant stress related to administering their residency programs, ensuring continued care delivery to the communities they serve, recruiting, on-boarding and training residents since the COVID-19 pandemic began in 2020. Many residency programs continue to struggle with patient volumes, virtual interviewing, assessing resident readiness and workforce disruptions and shortages.
The Program Director Wellness Task Force is charged with exploring options for providing wellness support to AFMRD members as well as their team members and recommending wellness initiatives to the AFMRD’s Board of Directors.
The six program directors who are members of the group planned to hold their first meeting virtually in early October.
Nguyet-Cam Vu Lam, M.D, FAAFP, Program Director, Bethlehem Family Medicine Residency at St. Luke’s University Health Network has been selected to serve on the Association of Family Medicine Residency Directors’ (AFMRD) new Program Director (PD) Wellness Task Force. (Contributed photo)
Dr. Lam said she’s excited to serve on the task force and contribute to its important work.
She has been passionate about physician well-being since 2014, when she was asked to lead a residency faculty development session at St. Luke’s about physician burnout. In that role, Dr. Lam developed initiatives to promote physician well-being and combat burnout, which she learned from surveys was as high at St. Luke’s as it is nationally.
The group devised ways to support physician well-being and shared them with others in the network.
“We created physician wellbeing curriculum and residency policy on wellbeing before it became a requirement of residency programs,” she said.
Having been Program Director for four years, Dr. Lam said she knows first-hand how challenging the role can be.
She is happy to be a part of the AFMRD task force “to support program directors in their well-being so that they can continue the high calling of training future family physicians.”
Note: This local health news is brought to you in partnership with St. Luke’s University Health Network.
