The Family Anesthesia Experience (FAX): Implementing a Social Support-Focused Wellness Programme Across Multiple Residency Programmes

Introduction: Lack of social support negatively impacts medical trainees' wellness. Programmes to educate medical trainees and their support persons (SPs) have been developed to improve resident wellness, but implementation of these programmes at other institutions remains unclear. We aimed to demonstrate the feasibility of implementing the Family Anesthesia Experience (FAX) programme across multiple institutions and to assess the programme's utility.

Methods: FAX includes didactics on wellness, burnout, substance use disorder and institutional resources; a panel of senior residents and their SPs; and small-group simulations of airway management, common procedures and a high-fidelity intraoperative code. We assessed the programme qualitatively using semistructured interviews of 20 first year anaesthesiology residents and 20 SPs. Data analysis was performed via a content analysis approach.

Results: Twelve anaesthesiology programmes of varying size and geographic locations implemented FAX with minor adaptations. Minimal direct costs were incurred for the virtual programme. Participants enjoyed the event overall. Content analysis showed that FAX improved SPs' understanding of residency and communication between SPs and residents, had minimal impact on SPs' stress, reduced residents' interpersonal stress with SPs and modified perceptions on wellness and burnout. We developed a conceptual model in which we propose SPs' understanding and empathy for their residents would improve through FAX, which may improve communication with and support for residents.

Conclusion: We demonstrated that FAX can be implemented at varying anaesthesiology residency programmes. Family-oriented educational events like FAX may be an effective approach to improve SPs' understanding of a resident's role, thereby increasing social support for residents.