Half or more of residents and medical students, physicians, nurses and physician assistants reported burnout prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. Burnout continues to limit the well-being of healthcare trainees and professionals as well as the numbers of students pursuing careers in healthcare. It is also associated with negatively impacting patient care and safety. In contrast, flourishing continues to gain traction practically and empirically as an interdisciplinary "big picture" means of supporting holistic care for healthcare trainees and professionals and their care for patients. Flourishing is familiar and embraceable for Christian healthcare students, residents and professionals seeking to discover or recover their own foundation for living, working, and leading from abundant wellness. We will consider the flourishing framework of Christian psychology, unpack some lesser-known contributors to burnout and explore a key ingredient to a flourishing and un-burnout plan.

Dr. Natalie Cupples Pickering is an organizational psychologist, board-certified coach, wife, mom, Ironman triathlon finisher, and an Enneagram style 1. She loves good coffee, mountains, deep conversation and supporting transformation. Her mission is to equip, inspire and empower wholehearted professionals and leaders in the workplace, community, and the home to promote personal and professional flourishing.

She is the CEO of High Places Coaching and Consulting, Inc. and is the Organization Development psychologist at a government healthcare system where she specializes in leadership development, burnout prevention and emotional intelligence.

Dr. Pickering enjoys supporting emerging leaders in the development of their leader identity and translating this to performance impact to build resilient people, teams, and organizations. She has significant experience supporting healthcare professionals across settings and specialties and served as a global worker in West Africa. Dr. Pickering's experience also includes work with public and private schools, hospitals, community mental health centers, not-for-profits, local businesses, solopreneurs, universities, and government agencies. She has developed and managed an internal Employee Assistance Program (EAP) program and coached and consulted executive leadership of for-profit and not-for-profit organizations across various industries.

Learn more at www.yourhighestplace.com

Acts 1:8 is an outline for the remainder of the Book of Acts--and for the Holy Spirit-led transformation of the world. God's story-line is nearer than ever to completion, but there's still lots of action ahead. Participation in this greatest of all struggles will entail hardship and loss. Are we prepared to do our part?

Rick Donlon grew up in New Orleans and graduated from TCU in 1986. He completed medical school at LSU-N.O., and a combined Internal Medicine and Pediatrics residency at the University of Tennessee, Memphis. In 1995 he and three medical school classmates opened a primary-care health center for the poor in Memphis’s most medically underserved neighborhood. The work eventually grew to include eight health centers, five dental clinics, and a family medicine residency programs providing over 170,000 patient visits annually.

Beginning in 2003, many of the medical and dental providers, including Dr. Donlon, moved into the underserved communities where they work. In those same low-income settings, they’ve planted over a dozen house churches. That house church network has subsequently sent dozens of long-term medical missionaries to North Africa, The Arabian Peninsula, Central Asia, and the Horn of Africa.

Physicians, dentists, and other healthcare workers who’ve trained with Dr. Donlon in Memphis have started or joined similar ministries in low-income communities across the US. Dr. Donlon, his wife Laurie, and their children live in the Binghampton neighborhood, where he serves as an elder in the house church network.