Tait D. Shanafelt, MD
Citation: Kidney News 12, 10/11
An international thought leader in the field of physician well-being and its implications for quality of care will deliver the state-of-the-art address “Reducing Physician Distress: Organizational Approaches to Improve Physician Well-Being” at a plenary on Friday, Oct. 23.
The speaker will be Tait D. Shanafelt, MD, who is the chief wellness officer, associate dean, and Jeanie and Stewart Ritchie Professor of Medicine at Stanford University. Dr. Shanafelt’s pioneering studies in this area nearly 20 years ago have been credited with helping launch the field of organizational efforts to promote physician well-being.
He was the founding director of the Mayo Clinic program on physician well-being and served a three-year term as the president of the Mayo Clinic voting staff.
In 2017, he moved to Stanford, where he leads the WellMD Center. He is a member of the American College of Physicians Taskforce on Physician Well-being and the National Academy of Medicine Committee on System Approaches to Support Clinician Well-being. He has helped hundreds of organizations and their leaders work to improve burnout and promote professional fulfillment for physicians.
Dr. Shanafelt has published over 120 scientific manuscripts on this topic and he has served as a keynote speaker to the American Medical Association, Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education, Association of American Medical Colleges, and American Board of Internal Medicine. Dr. Shanafelt’s studies in this area have been cited in CNN, USA Today, U.S. News & World Report, and The New York Times. In 2018, he was named by TIME Magazine as one of the 50 most influential people in healthcare.
In his clinical work, Dr. Shanafelt is a hematologist/oncologist focused on the care of patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia. He is a member of the National Cancer Institute (NCI) Leukemia Steering Committee and is currently the principal investigator on three NCI grants. He has been the principal investigator on numerous clinical trials testing new treatments for patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia. He has published more than 350 peer-reviewed manuscripts and commentaries in addition to more than 100 abstracts and book chapters in this area.
He is associate editor of the journal Leukemia.
Dr. Shanafelt received his MD from the University of Colorado Health Sciences, followed by an internship and residency in internal medicine at the University of Washington. He completed a fellowship in hematology and oncology at the Mayo Clinic.
