What is Physician Vitality?

Physician Vitality is a sense of deep contentment with life, career, and personal relationships that mark a satisfying career experience. Vitality refers to physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, and relational health that manifests in behaviors such as respect, kindness, collegiality, and excellence. There are unique challenges in living in the tension between one’s original reasons for going into medicine–usually to help others, and managing the reality of stressful clinical practice, negotiating managed care, and high patient flow. Rather than being a measure of how busy a physician is, vitality refers to the deep sense of purpose and professional fulfillment that results from one’s spiritual or philosophical frame of reference.

Physician vitality often relates to how attuned physicians feel to hospital administration and colleagues, and their pride in being connected to the organization. Engagement consists of a high degree of personal identity with the mission of the organization. For Loma Linda University Medical Center, this entails a spiritual synergy characterized by the following concepts:

• Active acknowledgement of the role of faith and spirituality in healing
• Attitude of service toward people in need of care marked by our core values of compassion, integrity, excellence, teamwork, and wholeness.

Why are physician vitality and engagement important?

Being a physician is a calling to service that has social, personal, professional, relational, and legal implications, greatly affecting institutional engagement and overall wellbeing. Negative physician experience is manifested in attitudes and behaviors that are destructive to a healing environment, contribute to a culture of anxiety and fear, and increase the likelihood of medical errors.

The mission of Loma Linda University is “…to further the healing and teaching ministry of Jesus Christ to make man whole…”  This embraces patients, employees, and physicians. Physician vitality and engagement are enhanced through education, programmatic and individual attention to physician needs.

Director of Physician Vitality

Dr. Alecia Grigsby serves as Director of Physician Vitality. Serving your needs is accomplished through educational programs for residents and faculty physicians; research; and interventions directed at systemic, group, and individual levels. Dr. Grigsby is available for workshops, grand rounds presentations, personal or professional consultations, physician coaching, or confidential consultation regarding personal relationships, professional challenges, or issues affecting general physician wellbeing.