Who’s Who in Wellness: Meeting Dr. Chetana Kulkarni

Meeting Dr. Chetana Kulkarni

Dr Chetana Kulkarni is the Resident Advisor in the Department of Psychiatry. The Resident Wellbeing Committee sat down over Zoom to chat with Chetana about her role, and her take on health and wellbeing during the pandemic.
 

To book an appointment with Dr. Kulkarni, send an email to chetana.kulkarni@sickkids.ca.

As Resident Advisor, how would you describe your role?

I think it’s a bit of a mish-mash of everything. The idea of the Resident Advisor is to be separate or arms-length from the residency program, and to be available to residents for issues that might come up. Those might be personal issues, issues related to their rotation, conflicts with colleagues or peers… Really, just about anything where the resident is looking for a bit of a sounding board, or someone to give some ideas or suggestions around what the next steps might be or where to go to address some of the things that are coming up for them. It’s meant to be private and separate from the residency program; it’s different than going to your site supervisor and it’s different than going to, let’s say, the Program Director. And sometimes, it does end up being, “OK, I think we might need to talk to your site supervisor, or maybe this needs to go to the Program Director…” — but, sounding it off before taking those steps and coming up with ideas of what those next steps might be.

Can you give examples of how you’ve supported residents in the past?

You know, it might be a conflict or challenges in communication with a supervisor — whether it be an issue with more limited interaction, perhaps on call, or an ongoing primary supervisor where there’s been challenges. Lots of interactions have been around the potential for modification of training or accommodations in some way, whether related to health concerns for the resident or COVID-related concerns… people who haven’t been successful at different exams and what to do in terms of next steps… changing programs… some people had concerns about competency-based design. The most common theme from last year was mental health, accessing psychiatry or a therapist.

What does wellness mean to you?

To me, it’s recognizing that it’s very individual and depends on each person. I agree with you, I’m not going to refuse an ice cream social and I love yoga, so I’m all for that… but it’s not enough. I think there are — before COVID, and even more so now — there are so many system-level challenges that impact on wellness. I think that’s one of the reasons why a yoga session or an ice cream social isn’t enough… it’s nice in the moment and can be very helpful, developing a yoga practice or mindfulness practices can be very important for many people. And on top of that, there are these broader systems, or institutional barriers, that impact on all of our wellness — whether it be how much time we spend documenting, or EMRs, or sitting in front of a screen all day now — that significantly impact all of us.

What are your go-tos for staying well?

So my go-tos are the ones I can’t do as much these days… like, going to the spa was one of my favourites. And it’s been coming on ten months that I haven’t been able to do that. But trying to back into yoga, or physical activity, spending time with family, trying every once in a while in a meeting to at least turn the camera off so I can walk around in the room or stretch. I invested in a standing desk; it hasn’t arrived yet. And a really cool chair. I’ve been trying to sit cross-legged because I was getting a lot of back pain from sitting in my pretty bad office chair. I’m a “move around while sitting” person.

Do you have any words of wisdom on maintaining wellbeing in residency?

I think it’s so great that we’re talking about it — this is the time to figure out and put together strategies. I think the things we learn in residency stay with us. Figuring out what makes sense and building things in that work for you now, so that when you’re practising you have those habits already ingrained — I think that’s really critical and something I wish I had learned early on.

Is there anything that we missed?

I’m always open to meeting residents. I’m pretty good about being able to set something up fairly quickly, within a couple of days or within a week at the most!