“...hiring enough nurses to do the work, hiring enough physicians to do the work is much more helpful for mental health than offering me an hour webinar on how to relax, or a virtual yoga session, for example. And a lot of mental health programming and initiatives that I am aware of, or that people have tried to propose has been more around the small individual aspects. Whereas you know, the reason that people in my team are stressed out, is because we did not have, like we weren’t fully staffed when the pandemic began. And so trying to hire people and staff up is going to be a lot more helpful than sort of telling people to be mindful, or to practice self care when they’re working, you know, 100 hours a week.”

— Interview Participant

“So, I think we need to be innovative in the ways that we give people time to be able to use those strategies. So Calgary, for example, in their OB GYN program for second years only, if you are working all day on labour and delivery and on call that night, they instituted something call the nap call, where you get to leave from 1 to 5pm to go do whatever you want, you can go take a nap, you can go exercise, you can go eat at the restaurant, like really, whatever, it’s just four hours of time for you in the middle of the day to go do whatever you need to do. And residents, it seemed like really liked that, because you know how to take care of yourself, you just need the time to do it, right. ...So like, I really think we just need to be a little bit better with giving people like control of their time and the ability to employ the wellness strategies that they know work for them.”

— Interview Participant