The Oregon Wellness Program (OWP) promotes Oregon Healthcare Professionals’ well-being through education, coordinated regional counseling, telemedicine services and research.
The OWP is a statewide collaboration of participating medical societies, healthcare systems and other Oregon entities, providing coordinated, high-quality counseling and educational resources. All Oregon medical societies are invited to become active members or participants in the support of the program.
The program evolved out of “town hall” meetings from early 2014, attended by physician and non-physician leaders of medical societies along with other organizations.
The program then developed into a coalition dedicated to bringing insights into the burden of “professional burnout” suffered by our colleagues and programs that would bring the wonder of medicine back into focus for them.
Over time, the coalition partnered with the Foundation for Medical Excellence, an Oregon foundation established in 1984 for the same purpose. An executive committee was elected to lead and develop the emerging program, entitled the Oregon Wellness Program.
The OWP was launched formally in early 2018 and will soon be linked with medical society partners around the state, with other institutions offering wellness and telemedicine services in some areas of Oregon.
The OWP is the first in the nation to offer a statewide group of services to its healthcare professionals. The intent of the program is for leaders to provide services to other healthcare professionals and develop a stepwise research program to evaluate the value of those services.
The program will further pursue the origin of “burnout” and develop more sophisticated methods for both intervention and prevention.