Chapter 01: The Importance of Addressing Faculty Health
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Description
In this chapter, Dr. Holleman sketches the range of reasons why it is important for institutions to address faculty health. He mentions the economic reasons as well as moral reasons. He sketches the sources of stress for clinicians and notes that physicians have conducted studies to understand how institutional pressures exert stress. He sketches the stressors for research faculty, noting that this population has not been significantly studied.
Identifier
HollemanWL_01_20170412_C01
Publication Date
4-12-2017
City
Houston, Texas
Interview Session
Warren L. Holleman, PhD, Oral History Interview, April 12, 2017
Topics Covered
The Interview Subject's Story - Overview; Overview; Definitions, Explanations, Translations; The Business of MD Anderson; The Institution and Finances; MD Anderson Culture; Critical Perspectives on MD Anderson; Understanding the Institution; Working Environment
Transcript
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
It is about 38 minutes after 9:00 on the 12th April, 2017. And I am in the Reading Room of the Historical Resources Center at the Research Medical Library. And today, I'm interviewing Warren L. Holleman, for the Making Cancer History Voices Oran History Project, run by the Research Medical Library at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas. And I'm going to read some details. And if I get anything wrong, please do correct me.
Warren L. Holleman, PhD:
Sure.
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
So Dr. Holleman came to MD Anderson in 2010 as an Associate Professor in the Department of Behavioral Science in the Division of Cancer Prevention and Population Sciences. All good so far?
Warren L. Holleman, PhD:
Yes
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Good. Today he is a Professor in the Department of Behavioral Science, and serves as director of the Faculty Health & Well-Being Program, which you've done since 2010, am I correct?
Warren L. Holleman, PhD:
Right.
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Okay, cool. Okay. So this is the first of two planned interview sessions, and I just wanted to say thanks.
Warren L. Holleman, PhD:
Well, thank you for having me.
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
For agreeing to dive into the process here.
Warren L. Holleman, PhD:
Yeah. I hope I can say something interesting.
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Well, I've really been looking forward to this. And I really enjoyed reading some of the background materials, because I went online and I looked at some of your articles. It really started to give me a different perspective on this dimension of the institution. I mean, that's kind of what the oral history project does, is kind of give windows into these—sort of take slices, if you will, almost like an anatomical chart through the institution. And this is definitely a new perspective. And in fact, since we're kind of talking in a general way, maybe just to start out, I could ask you this general question, which is, Why is Faculty Health and Well-Being important enough to warrant a department? And why has the institution made that kind of commitment to looking at this?
Warren L. Holleman, PhD:
Well, I could give a longer historical answer, which I'm sure we'll get to at some point for MD Anderson. But just in general, I would say that our faculty are one of our most important resources. Keeping them healthy is one way to, just from a purely economic standpoint; it's good for the productivity of the institution. When faculty are not healthy, when they're distracted or demoralized and unable to focus on their work, then the mission of the institution suffers. I think there's also a moral reason, not just an economic one, in that institutions should care about the health of its employees, for its own sake.
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
And as far as I understand and recall from my conversation with Ellen Gritz [oral history interview] a few years ago, looking at faculty health, and particularly the health of researchers, is relatively new.
Warren L. Holleman, PhD:
Yes. I think it's kind of obvious that when you're talking about clinicians that everybody's aware that being a doctor or a nurse is stressful, both in terms of dealing with serious illness and death, particularly in oncology. It's a really hard thing to do, to get up and do day after day, year after year. But it's not so obvious what the stressors and challenges of the scientists are. But they are there in terms of job security these days; NIH funding has been cut dramatically over the last decade or so. So they're in a situation where there's a high demand for success, but there's also a much harder path toward funding. So there's a lot of job insecurity and stress. Physicians have studied themselves very carefully over the past 10 to 15 years in terms of job burnout, job satisfaction, satisfaction with work-life balance, depression and suicide or suicidal ideation, and overall well-being. There have been a lot of good studies on that in the last decade. Ironically, biomedical scientists know virtually nothing. They don't know anything about their own health and well-being. And they're the ones who are supposed to be the experts on human health. And they've never studied themselves.
Recommended Citation
Holleman, Warren L. PhD and Rosolowski, Tacey A. PhD, "Chapter 01: The Importance of Addressing Faculty Health" (2017). Interview Chapters. 1075.
https://openworks.mdanderson.org/mchv_interviewchapters/1075
Conditions Governing Access
Open
