The Health Care Chief Wellness Officer: What the Role Is and Is Not

Abstract

Occupational distress among clinicians and its impact on quality of care is a major threat to the health care delivery system. To address threats to clinician well-being, many institutions have introduced a new senior leadership position - the health care chief wellness officer (CWO). This role is distinct from CWOs or other wellness leadership positions that have historically existed outside of medicine. The health care CWO role was established to reduce widespread occupational distress in clinicians by improving the work environment rather than by promoting health behaviors to reduce health insurance costs. A complex array of system-level drivers has contributed to clinician distress. Developing and overseeing the execution of a strategy to address these challenges and working in partnership with other operational leaders to improve well-being require a correctly placed senior leader with the appropriate authority and resources, such as a CWO. Health care CWOs must focus primarily on improving their organizations' work environment and culture, not on developing individual-level interventions, such as personal resilience, mindfulness, and self-care offerings. The goal of this work is to address what is wrong with the practice environment, not to make individuals better able to tolerate a broken system. Metrics to evaluate organizational progress as well as the efficacy of the health care CWO and his or her team are discussed in this Perspective. Occupational distress in clinicians is widespread and has implications for quality of care. Vanguard organizations have begun to put into place the leaders, infrastructure, and improvement teams necessary to address this issue. The health care CWO plays a critical role in the effectiveness of these efforts.