Redesigning the Gas Lounge: How residents changed their space

Anesthesiology residents at Stanford used to spend their few precious moments of relaxation in a lounge that looked like a dirty apartment. With a low-budget, resident-led plan, they found the funds and redesigned the anesthesiology lounge —known as the “Gas Lounge”—into a space that is clean, calm and where they would actually want to eat and sleep.  The Gas Lounge " before " Physicians spend a large portion of their lives at work and most of the time they get to actually relax is in the on-call room. Adam Was, MD, a fifth-year resident in the combined pediatrics and anesthesia program at Stanford, spoke this week to physicians at theInternational Conference on Physician Health ™ in Boston about how he and his fellow residents redesigned their own on-call room. The changes to the Gas Lounge came about through thePeer Support and Resiliency in Medicine Program (PRIME) at Stanford, which was built in 2010 around Jon Kabat-Zinn ’smindfulness-based stress reduction work and is intended to create a new culture that fosters interdependence, concern for others, self-care and emotional literacy. The program holds resident wellness retreats, regular wellness sessions led by faculty and wellness education sessions. Then, in 2014, the addition of a scholarship for resident-driven wellness initiatives opened the door for residents in the program to make meaningful changes that affect their daily lives.“It was really wonderful because they had these funds and made them...
Source: AMA Wire - Category: Journals (General) Authors: Source Type: news