A new role for Balint groups in overcoming professional isolation and loneliness

Abstract

Since its formal designation as a specialty in 1969, family medicine has embraced the concept of education in the doctor–patient relationship grounded in the principles of continuity and comprehensive care of families. As such, the influence of Balint groups on education has been ongoing and persistent, despite the vagaries of changing structures for education. However, in the United States, the focus has been heavily in resident education. As medicine has fragmented into narrow venues such as hospital care, urgent care, and subspecialty care in family medicine, physicians have become more disconnected physically and isolated from each other. Balint trained leaders and Balint groups—whether following the formal structure of traditional groups or serving as a safe place for conversations about the struggles in medicine and the meaning of the profession—have the opportunity to help heal the professional loneliness and isolation of physicians. Leaders and clinicians need to demand support for this idea in large health systems.