Healing medicine's future: Prioritizing physician trainee mental health

Abstract

In this article, we discuss current perceptions of the model physician and how these perceptions conflict with stressful realities of training environments and contribute to the staggering rates of burnout and depression faced by medical students and residents. We suggest a multi-tiered interventional approach to address these problems, with innovations for individual trainees, programs, institutions, and the health care system. Finally, we discuss the medical community's ethical obligations to ensure that it is appropriately and thoughtfully investing in the wellness of medicine's next generations of practitioners.