At WMed, we are committed to living our Values and improving our culture as we continue to grow.
Together we:
- Excel with integrity and professionalism
- Champion safety and belonging
- Listen, collaborate, and serve with respect and compassion
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We seek to create an inspiring environment to learn, teach, and work that embodies our values AND to promote a climate of cultural and psychological safety, equity, diversity, inclusiveness, cultural humility, engagement, trust, accountability, recognition, wellness, belonging, and cohesion.
As the graphic below depicts, numerous initiatives and activities are occurring at WMed to elevate our culture.
If you have questions or want to receive calendar invites to any events, please email culture@wmed.edu. Events are also listed and hyperlinked in the Pulse calendar and included in our weekly Wellness/Culture emails.
- Psychological Safety Initiative
Psychological Safety is a concept that comes from the business world. Researchers such as Amy Edmondson, PhD at Harvard Business School have demonstrated that organizations where members feel comfortable being both 鈥榗ontributors鈥 and 鈥榗hallengers鈥 tend to have high levels of employee engagement and performance outcomes. Timothy Clark, PhD has developed a 4-stage model of psychological safety, which highlights how individuals first need to feel 1) inclusion safety, and 2) learner safety, before feeling safe to 3) contribute and 4) challenge.
WMed kicked听off a five-month Psychological Safety 1.0 Initiative with a keynote address by Timothy Clark in January of 2021. A recording is available on (Login Required). This event was then followed by four months of programming, each focusing on a different stage.
Stage 1: Inclusion Safety
How do we make others feel included?
Values in Action: Respect one another & Serve with empathyStage 2: Learner Safety
How do we make others feel safe and motivated to learn?
Value in Action: Seek to understandStage 3: Contributor Safety
How do you make others feel safe enough to contribute and make a difference?
Values in Action: Strive for excellence & Celebrate effort and achievementStage 4: Challeger Safety
How do you make others feel safe enough to challenge the status quo, innovate, and make things better?
Values in Action: Speak up to inform & Act with integrityOur current Psychological Safety Initiative includes training Psychological Safety Representatives from across WMed departments,听offering resources to our leaders to foster psychological safety among their teams, and sharing examples of best practices throughout WMed. Visit (Login Required) for additional resources, infographics, educational opportunities, and recordings from our previous events.
- Wellness and Culture Ambassador Program
Wellness and Culture Ambassadors at WMed are employee and student volunteers who help create an engaging climate of cultural and psychological safety, wellness, recognition, diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging. They do so by speaking up regarding opportunities they see for culture improvement and encouraging participation in culture and wellness programming amongst their colleagues and classmates. Ambassadors are also encouraged to propose, develop, and implement initiatives of their own as well.
We ask that Ambassadors raise issues related to wellness and culture in their work unit meetings, serve as liaisons between their work units and the Office of Wellness and Culture, and, as possible, attend planning meetings and programming coordinated through the Office of Wellness and Culture.
Program Design
The foundational year was spent having in-person and online sessions developing tools for Wellness and Culture Ambassadors to use in their work: developing simple rules for a group, Plus-Delta Framework for decision-making about a microculture, active listening skills, providing feedback, and easy ways to grow a positive culture like gratitude jars.
The following years have sessions split into three different types: action planning; skill refreshers, and open office hours.
Action planning sessions are monthly and are spent thinking and planning events and initiatives for people to participate in, as survey results and group discussions have revealed people like opportunities to connect with others. Examples of planned events include: lunchtime game time, an apple orchard trip, and a pumpkin painting event.
Skill refreshers are bimonthly sessions set aside to provide a concentrated presentation on one of the skills presented during the foundational year. There is also an occasional new skill introduced, which is given more time.
Open office hours monthly opportunities for people to drop in and: get caught up on what has been going on; gain clarification on programming, skills, or events; or ask questions specific to their individual department, talk through an idea, or provide insight on how something wellness or culture-related could change.
Would you like more information about the Wellness & Culture Ambassador program? Please contact us at either wellness@wmed.edu or culture@wmed.edu!
- The WMed Meaning Project
These Word Clouds depict 100 responses from the WMed community regarding the questions: "What do you find most meaningful in your life?" and "What aspects of your time at WMed feel most meaningful?"As you reflect on these responses, we encourage you to consider these questions in your own life. The idea behind this project is that the meaning (or purpose) one finds in their workplace and in their life more generally is an important aspect of well-being鈥攂oth in bolstering emotional and physical health, and in buffering against burnout. The hope of this project is to foster awareness and conversation around the topic of meaning.
The impact of finding meaning in one's life has been considered in research, not only in the context of emotional health, but also physical health. Just recently, an article in JAMA,1 highlighted "life purpose" as a longitudinal predictor of health outcomes and mortality in the general population. Also, within the field of medicine, research suggests that resident burnout can be buffered by highlighting aspects of residency that tend to provide meaning (patient care, intellectual engagement, respect, and community).2 In a more general way, Jager et al. (2017) demonstrated that physicians who experience more burnout are 鈥渓ess likely to identify with medicine as a calling.鈥 As they conclude, "erosion of the sense that medicine is a calling may have adverse consequences for physicians as well as those whom they care for."3Experiencing a sense of meaning in one's life is relevant for all of us, regardless of our professional roles. The importance of finding meaning was compellingly articulated by Victor Frankl in 1946 in his book 鈥淢an鈥檚 Search for Meaning鈥4听鈥 a text written out of his professional work as a psychiatrist and his experience as a prisoner in Nazi concentration camps during World War II. His creation of logotherapy (named after the Greek word, logos, which can be translated as 鈥渞eason鈥), is based on three basic ideas:
- life always has meaning even when things are hopeless
- the will to meaning is the most important factor in motivating a person to live
- people can find meaning through experience and action
We hope these ideas offer kindling for your own reflections on where you find meaning in your life and how you can make the most of these experiences.- Alimujiang,A. et al. Association between life purpose and mortality among US adults older than 50 years. JAMA Network Open.2019;2(5):e194270.doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2019.4270
- Berg, DD et al. Fostering meaning in residency to curb the epidemic of resident burnout: Recommendations from four chief medical residents. Acad Med, 2019, July 9.
- Jager, A et al. Association between physician burnout and identification with medicine as a calling. Mayo Clinic Proceedings (Mar 2017), 92(3), 415-422.
- Frankl, V. Man鈥檚 Search for Meaning. Beacon Press: Boston, MA; 1946
- "WMed Welcomes" and Behind the Scenes @WMed Videos
As we continue to grow our medical school, the "WMed Welcomes" video offers a greeting from some of our wonderful (whatever adjective you think 鈥 or drop) faculty, staff, residents and students.
Behind the Scenes @WMed听is a video series that offers opportunities to be reminded of the faces and voices of those who we work and learn with at WMed.
听of Behind the Scenes @WMed听(Login Required)
