Dr. Nolan Wessell, Assistant Professor and Well-being Co-Director, Department of Orthopedic Surgery, Division of Spine Surgery, University of Colorado School of Medicine
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What is Dr. Nolan Wessell's background and expertise?
This is Carly Beam with the Becker Spine and Orthopedics Podcast, and I'm thrilled to be joined today by Dr. Nolan Wessel with the University of Colorado School of Medicine. Dr. Wessel, thank you so much for being here today.
Thank you so much for having me on board. Yeah, absolutely.
And before we dive into our discussion, I'd love to, if you could just introduce yourself and tell us a bit about your background.
Sure. So as you already mentioned, I currently work at the University of Colorado Department of Orthopedics, but I was born and raised in North Central Wisconsin, did my undergraduate studies at the University of Wisconsin, and then After graduation, I worked very briefly in medical research for the Howard Hughes Medical Institute before moving on to medical school at Wayne State University in Detroit. I stayed in Detroit for my residency at the Henry Ford Health System and then moved out to Colorado in 2017 to do my fellowship in adult spine surgery at the University of Colorado. So since 2018, I've been on faculty at the university. Currently, the majority of my practice is spent on the south side of Metro Denver in the Highlands Ranch community, but I still maintain a small portion of my practice at the main university campus.
Great. And yet an interesting aspect of your title is reading about you earlier, a well-being co-director. Can you talk more about that?
Sure. You know, it's...
How is burnout affecting healthcare professionals in orthopedics?
It's probably no secret to anybody that works in healthcare or has friends or family that work in healthcare that burnout, especially on the heels of the COVID pandemic a few years ago, has run rampant throughout the system. And that's not just isolated to orthopedic surgeons. But what I can tell you is that currently about 40% of active orthopedic surgeons endorse symptoms consistent with burnout and depression. And over the course of an orthopedic surgeon's career, upwards of 60 to 65% of individuals may suffer from symptoms of burnout and depression. And in a system that's already very strained, this can lead to early attrition, which we certainly don't need because as the baby boomers age into those years where they demand more care, orthopedic care is a major part of that.
And we really just want to make sure that we're taking care of not just our patients, but ourselves, right? We can't be expected to care for other people if we ourselves are not in good physical and mental conditions. So the University of Colorado, like many large institutions, has done its best to prioritize wellness. And myself and one of my colleagues from the Children's Hospital of Colorado, Dr. Sarah Sibyl, serve as the co-directors for wellbeing for our department. So it's an interesting role that's kind of always evolving.
Yeah, I was about to say, and I mean, obviously, it's burnout being so rampant. And I know there are a lot of different headwinds facing spine surgeons. And I'm wondering, how are you tackling those? How are you training your students, your residents in spine orthopedics to face these headwinds without completely burning themselves out?
Sure. I think that's an important question. And I don't have all the solutions to that. Certainly as you look at an older generation of surgeons and physicians and healthcare providers, I think we can all agree that the work-life balance really was not there. It was kind of just a mentality of work, work, work. I'll relax when I retire. And then you've got a younger generation. So I'm 41 or nearly 41. And kind of starting with my generation and those a little bit younger than me, I think they are much better suited to help maintain that kind of work-life balance and people in kind of their mid-career are somewhat caught in between, but more and more now, now you see it at the university that prioritizing that work-life balance, especially in a state like Colorado, where
Outdoor activities are available to you essentially 365 days a year. People really want to make sure that they're taking care of their own wellbeing in conjunction with caring for patients.
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