Dr. Jane Lemaire appointed to Director of Wellness

The Cumming School of Medicine (CSM) is pleased to announce the appointment of Dr. Jane Lemaire, MD, as the Director of Wellness, in the Office of Professionalism, Equity and Diversity. Her appointment, which is intended to benefit academic faculty within the CSM, takes effect Apr. 1.

Over the past 15 years, in her role as vice-chair of physician wellness and vitality in the Department of Medicine, Dr. Lemaire and the wellness team have published research, delivered presentations and helped build a resource network on physician health and wellness. Much of that work relates to strategies for managing mental health related to physician burnout.

Research indicates that medical professionals who take care of others tend to suffer the effects of burnout more readily than the general population, in part because the work can include illness, trauma and death.

“Similar to how a coal miner might experience certain types of lung cancers at a higher level, burnout is an occupational hazard for physicians,” Dr. Lemaire says. “We have an opportunity to take much of the groundwork done in the Department of Medicine over the last 15 years and apply it more broadly at the faculty level.”

Dr. Lemaire is also physician lead of Well Doc Alberta, a forum to create a provincial physician wellness strategy. She is a practicing physician within Alberta Health Services, vice-chair, Physician Wellness and Vitality, Department of Medicine, and Wellness Lead at Ward of the 21st Century Research and Innovation Center. Dr. Lemaire is a clinical professor of general internal medicine in the Department of Medicine and a member of the O’Brien Institute for Public Health.