wellness, enhancing strategies toward personal wellness in the ever-changing world of laboratory medicine. I'm Dana Powell Baker. I'm assistant professor at the Department of Clinical Laboratory Sciences in the University of Kansas Medical Center here in Kansas City, Kansas. Hello, I'm Carla Ellis. I'm an associate professor of pathology at Northwestern University in the Feinberg School of Medicine. I'm also the director for wellness, diversity, equity and inclusion for our department. And I am also a renal pathologist. And as far as disclosures, the presenting faculty have no relevant financial relationships with commercial interest to disclose. This course on personal wellness is part of a four course series here. And so this is our inaugural course on sustaining health and wellness in a crazy world, which will be followed up with three additional courses that we hope that you will participate and attend and to continue this conversation on personal wellness. So in this presentation, our learning outcomes will focus on describing personal wellness and its benefits for the laboratory medicine workforce. We will also explain the impact of personal wellness on our own health and effectiveness in various aspects of our work. And then finally, we'll discuss strategies and approaches to help pathologists and laboratory professionals to integrate the practice of personal wellness in their own lives. So before we get started, I wanna pose a question to the audience just to get things going. So I would like for each of you to think about what does personal wellness look like to you? As we continue to work through the COVID-19 pandemic, the past year and a half, truly we're going beyond 18 months now, has been very difficult for each of us. Recent surveys and study findings have demonstrated the need for increased visibility of our workforce and of course, knowledge about mental health awareness, burnout prevention and achieving personal wellness. Many of us have been burdened with increased professional personal challenges and this accumulation of strains has pushed many of us to our limits. And so before we take this deeper dive or go further into this conversation, I really want us to start with our baseline of what we feel like personal wellness looks like to each of us. And so as we describe personal wellness, one description out there describes personal wellness as more than the absence of disease or stress. Wellness involves having purpose in life. And so with this, I always say, living life on purpose, with purpose, if you think of it in those terms. Also active involvement in satisfying work and play, having and maintaining joyful relationships, a healthy body and living environment. I'll also add to that even a healthy living and work environment, and also happiness culminating all those dimensions together. And as we describe these dimensions and you'll hear about these eight dimensions of wellness in each of the courses in this series, you'll notice that they're all overlapping and it all ties into our goal of achieving personal wellness because various components of areas of our life, such as our social segment of our lives, the emotional aspects, spiritual, intellectual, physical, environmental, financial, and occupational all come together to really impact our goals or our initiative and wanting to strive towards that personal wellness and overall wellbeing. And so as I previously mentioned, there are recent laboratory medicine workforce studies that have noted burnout and lack of wellness as concerns by pathologists and laboratory professionals across the board. And in particular, work-related stress and burnout have been increasingly identified in survey findings over the past couple of years. And this is not something that is a COVID-19 pandemic or specific to this timeframe. This has been noted in surveys prior to the start of this pandemic, but this pandemic has definitely amplified these issues and findings. As we talk about our cultural wellbeing, but also our own personal wellness and how that impacts our effectiveness in our work and in our ability to be effective in performing our work. And so once again, why are we here today? Not just to talk about personal wellness and just to describe it, but we also want to provide those strategies and approaches toward personal wellness and burnout prevention, because this is very essential to all of our work-life balances that we're striving towards. And so on that same note on work-life balance, I want to follow up to my previous question to the audience of asking you all currently right now, how is your work-life balance? And as we all know, this can change from day to day, from year to year, but in this moment, how are you feeling about your work-life balance? And so as you're thinking about this, I'm going to go on to the next slide to talk more about work-life balance. So work-life balance is described as connecting or impacting, I would say rather connecting to a healthy work environment. So the healthier work environment that you have, the more feasible it is to have that work-life balance. Whereas if you work in a unhealthy environment, then that will cause disruption and you'll be able to achieve that work-life balance. I've told people before, I'm not sure that there's a perfect picture of work-life balance. It's going to look different for each and one of us. It's not going to be cookie cutter. And I think it's fair to strive towards an ideal work-life balance, what works best for you and for those that you are in relationship with, whether that's family, friends, colleagues, what have you. But it is important to try to strive towards an ideal work-life balance picture in your life. And in doing so, this will help reduce stress and prevent burnout or further burnout for some of you who may be experiencing burnout at this time. The other reason why we want to strive towards that ideal work-life balance is because chronic stress has been identified as the most common health issue in the workplace, especially in the healthcare work environment with potential consequences, such as hypertension, heart problems, digestive issues, chronic aches and pain. And of course, mental health is a very important part of this picture. And so, we have these consequences listed here, but we haven't touched on fatigue, mood swings, irritability, which of course is not going to make those personal relationships as joyful, whether you're having those interactions in the work environment or at home in your own personal lives. And of course, that's all going to impact your ability to be effective in work and seeing that decrease in your overall work performance. So, as an example here, I'm going to use myself in this diagram of work-life balance because I want to be very transparent and very authentic in this presentation to you. I'm sure many of you, such as myself, have attended sessions on personal wellness where it looks like the presenter has this perfect picture of work-life balance, but I figure mine is a reflection of many of those that are out there. And so, I want to start with the area of work. So, as an assistant professor and as a certified medical laboratory scientist, obviously, one of my chief or main responsibilities will be teaching. So, that's obvious, teaching responsibilities. But what's not shown or seen actively is who I have to work with as well. And so, I will ask for a couple of clicks here to kind of demonstrate these bubbles that I have going on beyond this picture. So, I definitely work with a lot of mentees, and that's not just in work, but also in my engagement in professional organizations. But I also have students that I work with, not just inside the classroom, but also outside of the classroom. And then if I keep going around the circle of family, friends, and self, you'll have with family, your significant other, who may need your time and attention, of course, children, if you have any, parents, I know as my parents are getting older, I'm finding myself more increasingly engaged in their management of care, and also just the management of their household or whatever support they need. If you have furry friends, your pets, they definitely have needs. And so, you're giving attention and time to your pets. And then also following that with, if you're active in a church community or in a spiritual group or spiritual gatherings, that requires time. If you're in school, I'm in school right now, I'm actively pursuing my doctoral degree. So, of course, that's gonna require amount of time and energy and effort directed there. And then I'm gonna keep going with friends. So, I want time to be able to actually see my friends, to socialize with them, see what's going on with them. Maybe having life events such as weddings, baby showers, birthday parties. So, creating time for that. And then when I keep going around, I haven't even talked about all the committees that I serve with or on or lead. I currently serve as the chair elect for the Council of Laboratory Professionals with ASCP. And ASCP is not my only professional organization that I'm actively involved with. So, really just spreading myself, as you see here, across the board in terms of my time. But when I get to me, what's left for me after all of this, right? And I'm sure this is very similar to your own picture of work-life balance. And it goes back to that analogy of pre-flight safety checks of you put the oxygen on yourself first before you put oxygen on anyone else. And so, but in this picture, it didn't really look like I was putting oxygen on myself first. I've been applying oxygen to all these other areas of my life and to all of these other people. But I think that's the nature of a healthcare worker as pathologists, as laboratory professionals, our training, our work, it's just built into us to care for others. We wanna provide quality care. We wanna make sure it's high quality and we wanna make sure that it's contributing towards positive optimal outcomes for our patients. But are we applying that same high quality effort to ourselves? Are we applying that same optimization of positive outcomes for ourselves? Because if we're not doing that for ourselves, we're not going to be effective in doing that for our patients. And so this is something that we not only owe to ourselves, but also owe to the patient lives that we say and claim and do support and contribute as a member of the overall healthcare team. And so I just really want you to think about this in terms of personal wellness for you. You hear about personal wellness from organizations such as increased production, increased output, effective workforce, but no, you're not going to be effective in all these other areas of your life and all the other lives that you support and contribute towards if you're not giving yourself that same energy or effort. So after saying all of that, I'm sure some of you are asking yourselves, is personal wellness and work-life balance possible for me? Is that even feasible for me with everything I have on my plate right now? I'm being expected to achieve this. I'm being asked to do more. I'm being asked to be even more present, So how do I get to that space of me and being able to achieve that balance for me? And so to answer that, I'm going to ask for a click here. So this is something that Janna Kingsford said, and that balance is not something you find, it's something that you create. And so I know you may be thinking, great, this is another task for me to do, but it is something that you have to create for yourself. As I mentioned earlier, striving towards not perfect work-life balance, but striving towards an ideal work-life balance for yourself so that can lead to your own personal wellness, to your own personal wellbeing. And so let's talk about how you can create this. And I'm gonna use myself here as an example again. And so as we talk about creating balance and we go back to those eight dimensions of wellness, where we talked about physical, social, environmental, occupational, all those varying dimensions that overlap leading to that outcome of improving our own personal wellness. It's already been brought up in various surveys. So if you're interested in that, brought up in various surveys, such as this one from ASCP, where we looked at job satisfaction, wellbeing and burnout, but also in other publications where they talked about prioritizing the mental health and wellbeing of our healthcare workforce. This has been referred to as an urgent to emergent global public health priority. And your personal wellness is a priority. How can we effectively treat and care for patients during a pandemic when our workforce is suffering from a lack of personal wellness, which is leading to these chronic diseases and conditions that we're starting to see here. And so let's talk about the benefits of striving towards personal wellness. And this is a very short list of how personal wellness or working towards that can improve our overall wellbeing. And so with the physical benefits, we look here, it does improve your overall health. You gain healthier habits and there is prevention of chronic disease, maybe even reversal of chronic disease when we talk about hypertension, for example. And then also when we discuss those social benefits of feeling connected, during this pandemic people, you talk about social, but it does really tie into some of the mental health aspect where we talk about feelings of loneliness, feelings of isolation, feeling like you're the only one going through something. And this is where connectedness is even so much more important. I understand that a virtual Zoom discussion is not the same as in-person and hugging and being able to have physical touch with someone else, but maintaining that level of connectedness with others, especially with other people who are going through the same things that you are, who are battling or coping with the same circumstances, very similar to your own, really has demonstrated to be helpful and actually helping you with their personal wellness that you are talking these things out with someone else who understands you. And in doing so, you're not only giving support to others, but you're embracing support from others as well. And then in terms of emotional benefits, obviously stress relief, because that's what we're really getting to the heart of here when we talk about personal wellness, we want that reduction in stress so that we're not leading to these chronic diseases or other conditions that are stemming from that buildup of stress. And also helping to recognize, express, and cope with feelings and emotions that we have been dealing with. And that's the one thing I felt like that has truly been highlighted in this pandemic, that in a topic that has been treated as we're not touching that in terms of mental health, it has really brought it to the forefront and to the surface and that, yes, this is something that we need to discuss. And as healthcare workers, we should feel safe in talking about our feelings and our emotions and how we're coping in this changing face or ever-changing world of healthcare as we are progressing through this pandemic. And so this is where I encourage you to really try to create that balance for yourself, because ultimately this is for you. And if you're improving your personal wellness, you will definitely see the impact of that in the other areas of your life. And so in sharing my story and how I strive towards creating balance, I do not have a perfect work-life balance. I will put that disclaimer out there, but how I had to figure out how to strive towards that ideal work-life balance for myself. So I already mentioned how I am a professor, but I'm also a full-time student. But in addition to those hats, I also am very active in our simulation community. I create and participate with the development of simulation activities for both our undergraduate and graduate students. I'm very active in DEI work, whether that's within my organization or within other organizations that I'm a part of. I'm a wife, I'm a mother, I am a sister, I am a daughter, I am a colleague, I am a SOAR. There's so many different hats that I wear. And how do I balance all of that along with the professional and academic responsibilities? I really had to be intentional in creating time and space for myself. And so I know that I wanna spend time with my family. And so I'll make it a point to utilize my calendar sometimes to make myself block out time. I'll block out time for writing, because of course, I need to be able to have publications as a professor, but also that's a part of my academic work. So I will calendar out that time or designate that time for writing. I will make sure that I'm planning some sort of break or vacation for myself down the road. So that way it kind of gives me light at the end of the tunnel. And it makes me feel like I'm striving towards or working towards something, whether that's a three-day weekend or a week long, somewhere different from being at home, or even if it is at home, because even being at home allows me to catch up on things that I otherwise have not been able to give attention to because of all of my other competing responsibilities. And so really prioritizing everything I do, organizing that list and really carving out that time and allotting time to those specific things. And I found in doing so that I've been able to strive towards that creation of balance so that I can allow more time and focus on my personal wellness. Do y'all realize that many of us have forgotten to schedule our own doctor's appointments, our own dental appointments in this past 18 months as healthcare workers, we've fallen off on our own health. And so getting back on those appointments with my doctors, my annual visits, my dental visits, all that is so, so important to my overall wellbeing. And I cannot express to you enough how much better I feel in putting oxygen on myself because in doing that, I'm able to be more effective in those other areas, whether it's work, school, family, friends, what have you. And so that was just a little bit on my own path to personal wellness as we talk about, you know, path to Boston, but I hope that this ignites a path to your own personal wellness. And hopefully what I described and shared with you already, it has been helpful as you start to think about how you want to strive towards personal wellness in your own life. And with that, I'll transition to Dr. Ellis as she can further describe her own path to personal wellness and give you all those strategies and approaches towards achieving that for yourselves. Well, thank you, Dana. That was amazing, amazing presentation. And again, my name is Carla Ellis and we'll begin to switch gears a little bit and talk about some of the processes that I've put in place and my path to personal wellness as well. So a good way to begin this conversation is the conceptualization of wellness and understanding exactly what it is. Sometimes the recent uptick in wellness initiatives can be criticized as, oh, just go do yoga or particularly in the medical education space, you're giving us more lectures on telling us how to be well, you're taking time away from our study to tell us to be well and that's making us more anxious. And it's almost like the cartoon that Dana showed in one of her slides where the two individuals were sitting at the table in the break room saying, I want some of this work-life balance that everyone is talking about. But my favorite definition of wellness is exactly what it literally says in the dictionary in one of the iterations, which is the quality or state of being in good health, especially as an actively sought goal. So in other words, wellness can be anything that puts you in an improved state of health, but it has to be actively pursued. And as Dana stated, it has to be personalized to you. It's making an effort to go out and exercise. It's making an effort to actively review your financial portfolio. It's making an effort to go out and be social. So my point being that it doesn't just come naturally, you need to actively pursue it. And this can be very tricky if your time and mental capacity are limited by other things that are not associated with those pursuits, which can sometimes be work. So I'll say I love doing yoga, but wellness is really much broader than that. And we'll talk about that in the subsequent slides. So similar to Dana, I was transparent here and I did a little exercise that I think might be beneficial to think about the eight dimensions of wellness and how you personally view them in terms of the importance in your life, your preparedness for said dimension and your level of comfort with your preparedness for it. So you'll notice there are only seven dimensions here because I purposely left out occupational wellness because this talk is sort of geared to personal wellness, but I definitely wanna share the graph that I composed for myself. And what I realized about myself is that the less comfortable I am with a particular dimension, the more important it is to me. And this is in the setting of all of them being important and all of them being at least 50% or more. But like, for example, we all know that financial preparedness is an obscenely absent in the curriculum of most medical training programs, be it medical school, grad school, medical laboratory, technician school. We just don't get it. We don't learn it. And some of us do a great job of learning it on our own. And some of us like me do not do that. So I feel like it's extremely important, but I feel the least comfortable about it. In contrast, I view spiritual and social wellness as somewhat less important, but I'm also the most comfortable with those two. So it's more than just looking at the individual dimension of wellness. It's viewing how important it is to you and how comfortable and prepared you are to think about it. In terms of emotional wellness, I view that as very important, particularly in the workspace that I have where I have residents and fellows that are observing me and watching me and waiting for my leadership and mentorship. And I have laboratory technologists and other support staff that are depending on my decision-making and my emotion-free leadership, but also trying to balance that with the fact that we do make very heavy diagnoses every day that have to be accurate. So sometimes it's just keeping that balance and sometimes communication that is very clear and direct to achieve that accuracy can be viewed as emotional, but those decisions and those directives have to be made. So just trying to keep all of that in proportion and in balance. I guess the majority of us could be better at physical wellness. Some of us are great at it, but it's clear as medical professionals that that is very important. And we all likely highly regard our intellectual wellness, our level of intellectual wellness very highly because of all that training and high complex testing that is required for our jobs. And I'll say, I do recycle, but, and I turn the water off when I'm brushing my teeth, but I feel like there's more that I could be doing for my concept of environmental wellness. And by the way, environmental wellness has a dual definition. So it's how we're protecting the planet and helping the earth and also like our personal physical environment around us. So the summary here is that at least by doing this exercise and I mean, I would recommend people just think about it. You don't have to actually put it into a graph, but at least I know now the areas that I'm more comfortable with and also those that can use more insight and effort on my part. How much do we all wish that our stress levels were at the lower left-hand corner of this diagram? Of course we all do. What a great, what a different world this would be if no one was stressed out or anxious, but it turns out that a healthy level of stress and anxiety is actually needed and is a natural occurrence and that by our bodies to aid in motivation and the processing of the millions of bits of sensory input that we are exposed to daily in the decisions that we have to make. So if we didn't have to analyze all this high complexity testing to support our livelihoods, then of course there would be inactivity and boredom and lameness and lameness meaning in terms of not going out to actively pursue that physical activity that I mentioned in terms of the definition of wellness. The problem exists when we navigate to the lower right-hand corner of the diagram where stress levels are peak and go hand in hand, as Dana mentioned with exhaustion, anxiety and subsequently burnout and a decline in physical health. So the key with personal wellness that corresponds to peak performance is achieving that balance to stay right in the middle where performance and not just work-related performance is at its highest. So also performance as a parent, all the examples Dana mentioned, performance as a spouse, performance in the community, performance in your professional circles, all will be maximized by the proper balance between the three levels of stress and anxiety. I would say the best thing to keep in mind while on your way to achieving work-life balance is the concept of work-life integration. So while it is extremely important to achieve balance between work and life, keep in mind that we have to work to sustain our livelihoods and that work will always be required of us, even at times when we don't enjoy it as much. Work is a part of life. So if we can occasionally think of it as more of an integration of something that is necessary, which is working, into our ever-changing personal lives and maximize ways to navigate between the two more smoothly and evenly, that would be very, very beneficial to be right in the middle of the graph that I just showed. I'll echo what Dana mentioned earlier. Optimizing time away from work is a great way to begin to do this. And if we can become more intentional with our time away from work, we can be more present and engaged when we are at work and in our professional duties by getting the proper rest in time with our loved ones. So for example, having a updated calendar, and I like month view, where you can see the whole month, so that we can identify and plan certain weekends and days off of the week to commit to things that we enjoy and stick to it. The next one might not apply to everyone, but it certainly has applied to me over the years, and it's making sure you use your PTO. And by use your PTO, I don't mean take a week of vacation to catch up on work. Guilty, I've done that. Your company or institution provides this to you, but it's up to you to maximize that time by engaging in non-work-related activities that increase your personal wellness. Self-care is a big topic these days. And again, just like any other type of wellness, it means different things for different people. Whether it's regular massages for folks who stare into microscopes for hours and hours and hours every day, or a hot bath, or shopping for something to reward yourself for meeting a deadline. So for example, I can go and get that handbag if I get my wellness talk for ASEP done by the deadline. That's something that, you know, just throwing that out there that might be an example of that integration that I described, or a long weekend getaway. But make sure to reward yourself for the hard work you do every day. So A, you won't forget about it. This is so easy for us to say, oh, I did this great thing, on to the next, put it on my CV, or not, and just go on to the next. But remember to slow down, be in the moment, and reward yourself for the hard work you do every day. And if you do that, that will oftentimes change the way you look at work. It's less about this high throughput for your boss, or high throughput for the company, and more about high throughput for you, and for your life, and the people that you care about in your life. Lastly, again, recognizing that no one way of achieving work-life balance, or work-life integration will work for everyone. Personalizing the experience to what makes you happy and brings you a sense of peace and fulfillment is the best way to achieve these goals. I wanted to share with you a couple of slides that I presented at one of our departmental town halls that was right at the height of the COVID pandemic. At the time I presented this, the vaccine was not available. And police brutality, and the associated images around that were at an all-time high. And I included them here because I feel like these issues are still relatable. And given the personal wellness theme of this content, this is still very useful information to be aware of. What it is, is there are four main types of what's called a stress injury. And in my opinion, sometimes stress injuries can be more detrimental than physical injuries. So you have life threat, which is the experience of a traumatic or gruesome observation, or observing a horrific scene, which that rings true to what was happening during the time of all the police brutality videos, which I got to the point where I couldn't even watch them anymore. Grief injury due to loss, okay? We had many people who were dying of COVID, people losing jobs, loss of life, loss of income, loss of control, you name it. If you lost it, it's a grief injury. There's a moral injury related to inner conflict. So watching behaviors that we know were not right and that violate our moral values is an inner conflict and a moral injury. And then lastly, there's fatigue injury, which is an accumulation of stress from multiple sources or from a single source. But the point being, it's without sufficient rest and recovery in between this source of stress. No breaks in between, just constant. So at that point, when I presented these slides before, we had just barely begun to adjust from COVID stress from a healthcare worker standpoint. And then we had to switch and direct our attention to the stress of racial injustices and discrimination. And I'm sure everyone is very familiar with that time. I know I am, which just means that it was a stress injury for all of us. But the definition and the studies around these injuries can relate to a lot of things. We have all lost someone. So that's a loss or a grief injury. We've all experienced a moral injury and we probably pretty routinely deal with ongoing stress without the time in between to take breaks and recover from that stress. So what do we do? How do we deal with it in the moment? And how do we heal? Well, the same people that described the stress injuries developed the seven C's of stress first aid. And so that begins with checking on others, checking in with others and with yourself. A very wise person once told me, observe, don't absorb. Check in with people, see how they're doing. Observe, offer your help and your assistance and listen, but don't absorb that stress and that energy if that's possible most of the time. Coordinate, get yourself help if you need it. Just like Dana said, remember to make your doctor's appointments. And if you feel like it's overwhelming and you can't handle things, seek out a counselor or a psychiatrist or a therapist for yourself and make sure that you take care of yourself, put the oxygen on you before you can help others. Cover, cover your colleagues and rely that they will do the same for you. This also applies to family members and friends. I just spent a significant amount of time working on our Q4 schedule. And it's from maybe about next week until the end of the year. I painstakingly assured that everybody had equal amount of service time and fairness and vacation. And then as soon as I submitted it, a colleague said, oh, I have to have cataract surgery and the recovery time is two weeks and I don't know when it is. So I said, well, that's okay. I'm gonna have to take care of that and handle that. And I could be the one covering or I could be the one having surgery. So I'm hoping that we will be able to take care of that and that if that has to happen to me in the future, that my colleagues will cover me as well. And so making adjustments within your schedule to be able to attend to these sorts of disruptions in your schedule and knowing that you have the resources and the collegiality for folks to do the same for you. Staying calm, stay relaxed, slow down, focus. The more you practice this practice of slowing down and focusing and breathing when you're not in a stressful situation will make it that much easier to apply that concept when you are in a stressful situation. Making sure we connect with others inside and outside of the workplace. Real quick, I know I'm telling a lot of stories here. Real quick, I had a nephrologist that I had a very, very tumultuous relationship with. She was just not accepting that I wouldn't do whatever she wanted me to do whenever she wanted me to do it. And it was causing a lot of stress. It's a work-related stress that was affecting me outside of the workplace. So eventually I said, can I take you to dinner or can I take you to lunch or can we have a coffee? And connected with her to show her that I'm not just this person in the lab that's providing her results, timely or not timely enough for her, I'm actually a human being. And that mutual respect and that mutual connection really, really improved that relationship a lot and it's much, much better now. So that was just an example. And then lastly, having the confidence and the confidence to A, stay in the moment and not get too bogged down with the future. I'm gonna have to cover for two weeks and figure that out and figure that scheduling out, but I'm not going to get bogged down in that right now. I'll deal with that when I get to it. Having the competence or basically remembering that we have competence. We are very highly skilled, highly trained individuals that are highly competent to do our jobs. And sometimes we forget that, but we have to keep that in mind and restore the effectiveness that we lose when we don't get the breaks in between constant stressors. Another thing that is really important to do is to use your, this is personal wellness, I understand. Please use your organizational resources. It's very, very important to do this. In many cases, your organization or your institution will provide a number of services to promote wellness both within the workplace and outside of the workplace and beyond. In terms of financial wellness, physical wellness, benefits, and support groups. So here at Northwestern, we have wellness benefits that if used can apply to certain incentives like discounts to fitness centers and a variety of financial wellness lectures like you see in the lower right-hand corner. I only recently even realized these existed and given the chart and the data that I showed you before about myself, definitely looking forward to taking advantage of some of these lectures to learn more about financial wellness. A variety of advisors and employee assistance program, meditation groups. A lot of this I didn't really find out until I had already been here for about a year and a half and just hadn't had the chance to hear by word of mouth or really dig deep into the wellness benefits page on our departmental website. We also have a scholars of wellness program. It's a year-long program where different faculty members from different departments engage in monthly lectures and activities about wellness, mostly leading to more organizational and occupational wellness and decreasing burnout. So less about personal wellness, but it's a year-long program. We have a project that we have to complete. We have a project advisor and there's a graduation at the end and we learn a whole lot about organizational wellness. So a lot of these things are just available and many of the dimensions of wellness, the eight that we talked about can be supported by programs at your institution or organization and already provides. And many of those are free of cost to you. So with that being said, I want to thank everyone. I'm hoping that all the participants today have a better perspective on their own personal wellness and hoping that folks have learned some tools to help maximize work-life balance and work-life integration. We will be available for Q&A shortly. And thank you so much for your time and attention and remember to be well.

personal wellness

laboratory medicine

burnout prevention

COVID-19 stress

eight dimensions of wellness

work-life balance

self-care strategies