Schaumburg, Illinois Dec 15, 2020 (Issuewire.com) - The American Medical Women’s Association (AMWA) strongly supports S. 4349, the Dr. Lorna Breen Health Care Provider Protection Act, which was introduced in the Senate on Wednesday, July 29. This bill would create behavioral health and wellbeing training programs and a national campaign to encourage health care professionals to seek support and treatment. The Dr. Lorna Breen Health Care Provider Protection Act would also initiate a federal study into health care professional mental health and burnout and provide grants to establish and expand mental health support services to those providing care to COVID-19 patients.
“The wellbeing of physicians, especially women, has been a focus of AMWA over the past several years, given the higher rate of burnout among women physicians and the increased rates of suicide,” stated AMWA Past President and Wellness Committee Chair, Kim Templeton, MD. “We have increased our efforts during the pandemic, due to the additional stressors that physicians now face,” added AMWA Executive Director, Eliza Chin, MD. These stressors are having disproportionate impact on women physicians, due to increased duties at home with childcare, elder care, and in-person schooling frequently not available, the risk of transmitting the virus to family members, and an increased sense of isolation and loneliness due to physical distancing.
AMWA has a multi-pronged approach to address women physician wellbeing, based on the work that the organization did with the National Academy of Medicine discussion paper on gender-based differences in burnout, published in 2019. One part of this is to address language on state medical licensure applications, to remove language that asks about specific diagnoses and to replace this with questions asking only about current impairment. “The goal of this initiative, Humans Before Heroes (HBH), is to encourage physicians who need help to be able to seek this, without concern about the status of their license to practice medicine,” stated Loice Swisher, MD, co-chair of HBH. AMWA is proud to partner with the Dr. Lorna Breen Heroes’ Foundation in this effort. In line with this work, S.4349 includes provisions that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services specifically examine concerns related to licensing and credentialing as a barrier to physicians seeking mental and behavioral health treatment.
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About AMWA:
The American Medical Women’s Association (AMWA) is an organization that functions at the local, national, and international level to advance women in medicine, advocate for equity, and ensure excellence in healthcare.
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American Medical Women's Association ctomic@amwa-doc.org 917-882-5243 ctomic@amwa-doc.org http://www.amwa-doc.org
