Pediatric resident physician well-being is a national priority.1 Pediatric residents are at increased risk of numerous emotional and mental health concerns that may have substantial negative impact on individual residents and healthcare systems.1, 2, 3 Additionally, the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) requires residency programs to evaluate whether residents achieve fundamental understanding of factors that impact well-being.4 As a result, many pediatric residency programs have devoted considerable resources to support resident well-being and to teach about well-being drivers.5 However, without a consensus framework to conceptualize pediatric resident well-being, program leaders may feel uncertain about how to strategically plan comprehensive resident well-being efforts and education.5, 6

Several expert-informed well-being conceptual models exist. For example, resident well-being has been conceptualized using Maslow’s hierarchy. Through this lens, residents experience well-being when their needs for health and safety, love and belonging, esteem, and self-actualization are met.7 Physician well-being has also been described as meeting needs across multiple integrated and holistic domains, including physical, emotional, intellectual, spiritual, social, environmental, occupational, and financial.8, 9’10 Others have used global or foundational philosophical frameworks, including the pursuit of joy (hedonism) or self-actualization and flourishing (eudaimonism), to conceptualize physician well-being.11 While these models may inform understanding of resident well-being, they may not capture the unique perspectives of pediatric residency stakeholders for whom well-being interventions will be developed.

This study aimed to use Group Concept Mapping (GCM) methodology12 to describe how a diverse sample of pediatric residency program stakeholders conceptualized resident well-being. Primarily, we aimed to create a conceptual model demonstrating key pediatric resident well-being domains. Secondarily, we aimed to compare well-being priorities between pediatric residents and pediatric residency program leaders to assess stakeholder subgroup alignment in developing well-being initiatives.