Should you have a coach? Greg Pawlson, Beth Griffiths, & Vicky Tang

Coaching is in.  During the later stages of the pandemic, it seemed every other person, and particularly the junior faculty in our Division, were either being coached, in training to coach, or coaching others.  When I was a junior faculty, coaching wasn’t a thing.  Sure, Atul Gawande wrote about coaching in surgery - having someone observe you and coach you on your technical skills- but that’s a far cry from the coaching programs focused on empowerment that are exploding around the country today.

Today we learn more about coaching from 3 coaches: Greg Pawlson, coach and former president of the American Geriatrics Society, Vicky Tang, geriatrician-researcher at UCSF and coach, and Beth Griffiths, primary care internist at UCSF and coach.  We address:

• What is coaching? How does it differ from therapy? How does it differ from mentoring

• What is typically covered in coaching sessions? 

• What is the evidence (see many links below, sent by Beth)

• What are the standards for becoming a coach?

• Who is coaching for?

My take: coaching has tremendous potential.  There seems to be a gender story here as well - coaching may be of particular benefit to women who are at higher risk for burnout.  Note, for example, the hot off the press JAMA Network Open trial which demonstrated modest benefits across a range of outcomes was conducted exclusively in female resident physicians.  Kemi Doll, a physician-researcher and coach, has a terrific podcast I highly recommend everyone listen to, though it is targeted at women of color in academic medicine.  On the other hand, there is a concerning side, described in this Guardian article titled, I’m a life coach, you’re a life coach: rise of an unregulated industry.  See also the long list of disclosures in the JAMA Network Open study.  Our guests note, rightly, that the same profit motive and concerns are true about colleges.  Still, I remain concerned when I see that the Life Coach School costs $21K; when the founder of the Life Coach School’s goal is to grow a $100 million/year business; and when my spidey sense tells me there’s something cultish about the empowerment industry.  So, I see the potential of coaching, particularly for groups that face challenges in academic medicine; and I worry about the injection of profit-motives and the goals of industry leaders pushing the meteoric rise of the life coach industry.

-@AlexSmithMD

1.  Hot off the presses RCT in JAMA October 2023: Study that looks at 1000 female resident physicians at 26 sites that showed that coaching improved each outcome assessed (burnout, moral injury, imposter syndrome, self-compassion, and flourishing). 

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2810135

2. An RCT for female residents published in JAMA May 2022: This was the initial pilot single institution study by the same team as above. Their findings concluded that it was feasible to implement an online coaching program for female residents and that coaching improved emotional exhaustion, imposter syndrome and self-compassion.
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2791968?fbclid=IwAR0taY5CGpUa5eyfleNIl7RfXLT7qVt0GakKPGlT9ESIPLn0yCKWG9obrZo

3. A March 2022 study of Stanford offering coaching as a benefit to their physicians and finding improved self-compassion and burnout. https://www.mayoclinicproceedings.org/article/S0025-6196(22)00038-6/fulltext

4. The initial RCT published on physician coaching in JAMA in 2019 showing that coaching improves quality of life. This is the first RCT that was available for coaching in physicians.  https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullarticle/2740206 

5. A 2020 RCT of coaching for primary care physicians shows that coaching improves burnout well-being during the intervention and has a sustained duration at 6 months of follow up.  From Beth Israel and UNC.  https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32297776/

6. The Business Case for Investing in Physician Wellness, again in JAMA. This paper includes coaching as a sign of a more mature physician wellness program and states it has a positive return on investment.
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/article-abstract/2653912