The Impact of Professional Coaching on Early Career Academic Emergency Physicians

A recent systematic review and meta-analysis found coaching to have significant positive effects on goal attainment, well-being, coping skills, work attitudes, and goal-directed self-regulation. Randomized controlled studies of professional coaching have found significant positive effects in various settings including high school teachers and students, postgraduate students in a major university, and executives in the commercial, government, and education sectors. Coaching provides the participant focused time with a trained professional who facilitates that participant's self-determined and self-directed problem-solving and change. Coaching helps the participant "get on the balcony" away from the action on the "dance floor" to see things from a different and broader perspective and, in doing so, enriches the participant's ability to generate options, challenge biases, understand the effects of emotions, and consider uncertainty. This study also establishes the level of adult development of academic faculty and creates an initial qualitative dataset for further longitudinal study and theory generation for physician well-being, burnout, leadership strengths, and goal attainment.