Penn State Health St. Joseph Family Medicine Residency:

From the bottom of our hearts here at St. Joes, thank you! Our wellness day was a resounding success. The gears that were meticulously put in place by our Wellness committee, led by Dr. Accamma Joy, DO, started turning on February 27th, 2019 in part thanks to the fuel and drive YOUR grant provided to us.

We are an unopposed community hospital residency program, which means our Residents are woven into the very fabric of the day to day operations of the hospital. To rearrange the tasks that our patients and care centers depend on us for translates to delegation of responsibilities to our already burdened providers and administrators. However, we want to take a moment to thank them in this piece - this day would not have been made possible without them.

Our wellness day was marked with great food and range of activities! We learned about healthy eating habits from our in-house nutritionist, Nicole Rhoads; one of our residents, Varun Malik, DO, gave a lecture on the science of happiness, with a guided self-reflection exercise that served to increase the level of happiness the listener came in with before; our own Dr. David Arena, JD, PsyD, utilized his mastery of hypnosis to put us into a more relaxed state; and Cody Minnich took time to remind us that we need to work on our bodies as well as our minds with a session of yoga.

As much as the hospital is our second home, we left it behind as a group for a team escape room challenge. It served as a way for us to spend time together away from campus and de-stress in a way that also focused on teamwork.

We had the maximum number of residents and faculty members from our program participating as possible, with everyone thoroughly enjoying the day.  Participants reported the activities allowed them to truly relax and focus more on their wellness instead of the stresses associated with residency. We are looking forward to next year’s event and in the meantime, we all hope to be better, together. Thank you, POMA, for helping make this event possible!