Participants described that the NM workshops prompted a re-evaluation of their identities as physicians and allowed them to develop reflective skills to navigate professional and personal spheres. Many residents acknowledged how they often compartmentalized their physician identities from the rest of their lives and how NM allowed them to reconcile these multiple identities. As one PGY1 shared:

We were able to reflect a little bit about how our personal relationships are not completely different from the relationships that we view and experience here in the hospital…I think we compartmentalize what we’re doing in medicine as a separate activity. But really, it’s in sync with our lives. They’re very much interconnected.

Others shared how thinking “through a narrative lens” brought them back to when they first started medical school, reorienting them to perspectives they had prior to medical training. One PGY2 said:

[NM] brings me back to when I was a new medical student…I think there’s this time in medical school where you’re starting out and you’re like, ‘Oh, of course I’m always going to feel the perspective of the patient. I’m never going to get caught up in the day-to-day of a hospital. This is why I went into medicine.’ And it just happens when you’re busy, when you’re tired, when being a doctor gets so much a part of your identity and your brain and the way that you think, that you do [get caught up].

In essence, residents described that NM allowed them to reconnect to other parts of themselves and bring these roles into their lives as physicians.

By bringing their whole selves into conversation with their identities as doctors, residents expressed how workshops served as a “space of rest” and led them to rediscover former creative interests that had been abandoned during residency. One PGY2 said: “[NM] really re-emphasized my creative interests…It gives me an outlet where I can…do things outside of work that restore me, and then go back to work with that sense of openness to whatever I encounter in the day to day.”

Residents acknowledged that the sessions became a part of honing their wellness and that by taking better care of themselves, they could be more present for their patients and better physicians overall. As one PGY3 shared, “I probably was a happier person after [NM]…[I] didn’t need as much time to recharge when I would come home after work.”

As highlighted by the most frequently used code, “reinforcing relationships,” residents shared that the workshops helped them deepen relationships with colleagues, patients, and others outside of work, thereby mitigating the isolation that often accompanies medical training. Participants described “a loss of community” during the covid-19 pandemic and that the workshops offered “a little piece of that back.”

Participants commented on the power of sharing their experiences with co-residents, often discovering new aspects of their lives. One PGY1 said, “I learned a lot about where my co-residents are coming from themselves…it made me really proud to be a resident here and [hear] how thoughtful and caring and patient-centred all my co-residents are…It was really enlightening and made me feel really connected to them.” Workshops also offered opportunities for kinship between residency classes. One PGY1 shared:

“After [a workshop] I had a pretty long conversation with a resident who was a year above me…It was just a nice connection that I wouldn’t have made otherwise. [NM] gave us a safe space to have that connection. So especially amongst people not in my class, it has been helpful to building bridges.

Indeed, many residents spoke to the meaningfulness of a space created by residents, for residents. One PGY2 articulated that “resident-led things, they’re not that common…[I]t’s one of the paradigms that residents need to take charge of educating one another and taking care of one another more. [NM] is a great example of a place where that happens.” Others corroborated this point by sharing how the dynamic would have changed had the sessions been faculty-driven; a PGY3 stated:

If it was coming from faculty, it would be different. I think people would be less open to expressing themselves openly and honestly. It makes you want to participate because you know that [the residents] put the work into setting up this session and they’ve been very thoughtful about what the goals of the session are. You just want to show up for your co-resident.

Thus, residents spoke to the sanctity of the resident-led space and how this allowed deeper intimacy to form while inspiring a sense of fraternal responsibility to one another.

One dividend of this growing camaraderie was how it normalized experiences and emotions during residency. One PGY1 commented:

As an intern, you feel super alone a lot of the time, because it’s all very new and you do not really know what is quote-unquote “normal” to feel during this. Hearing my co-residents talk about their experiences and their feelings throughout their time has…made me feel more confident and validated as a physician. I feel less alone and more like one of the group. I guess it’s just made me feel more confident as a physician towards patients.

Participants thus highlighted the impact that sharing can have, not only to build stronger bonds as a cohort but also to soothe professional anxieties about how they should or should not be experiencing residency.

Residents also described how workshops facilitated a sense of communion between themselves and patients by encouraging them to step back from their perspectives as trainees and instead consider the family in front of them. One PGY2 said:

You think about what you’re treating and about what you’re managing when you enter the room. But then, it’s great to have that perspective of sometimes just going into the room and seeing like, “wow, this is a family. I see these toys here.” I can think about what that family unit is just outside of the hospital, and how I can help them get back to that.

In this sense, workshops served as a pause for residents to remember their purpose as caregivers and prioritize their patient’s humanity before focusing on medical decision-making. Another resident expressed that finding that pause allowed for recognising the beauty of the clinical encounter: “So many beautiful things that happen in these patient encounters that…you don’t always get to appreciate when you’re in the weeds. But it pulls you back to see the forest and the trees.”

Residents also reflected on how centering the patient perspective and engaging in literature led to tangible changes in their clinical practice. One PGY3 alluded to a story from one workshop which was written from a patient’s perspective:

Being able to see things from the voice and perspective of a patient really helps me self-evaluate how I am delivering news…It helped me be a lot more conscious of the kind of words that I used, the way that I express myself because things that initially appear harmless looking at it from the patient’s perspective, through the literature, it can be received in a very different way. And [NM] helps shed light on that and helps me change some of my approaches.

Another PGY1 reflected specifically on how a workshop featuring a comic about a transgender patient’s clinic experience impacted their understanding of patients from marginalized backgrounds. This discussion stirred a deeper consideration of the experience of being misgendered: “It was like a particular switch to further reflect on how language that we use is so, so important. And I try to be conscious with every patient I see, to make sure that I’m communicating the best way I can.” Residents expressed a greater understanding of what it means to advocate for marginalized patients and were motivated to educate themselves and “provide better, more comprehensive care.” In tandem, residents expressed that the workshops led to an emphasis on relationship-building and gave them new tools for fostering stronger relationships both with their peers and with patients.

Finally, workshops prompted residents to reflect critically on their place within and outside of medical culture. Residents often associate medical culture with an emphasis on the biomedical sciences over biopsychosocial approaches, pressure to limit emotions in the workplace, hierarchy, perfectionism, and fear of failure. They repeatedly characterized NM workshops as a form of “nontraditional medical education” that taught “skills that you can’t teach in a book.” They praised the “different framing” of NM and saw it as a contrast to the “overmedicalization of patients” that they often received from other conferences.

In particular, residents shared that they used the workshops as a space to unpack emotions often discouraged in the workplace. One PGY2 said, “In medicine…you’re not supposed to feel, you’re not supposed to express emotion. That’s supposed to be separate…People may go so far as to [say] that that was a sign of being an incompetent physician.” This resident went on to share how the “safe space” of NM created a new culture around emotionality, where vulnerability and naming emotions “makes you a stronger person.”

For many who self-identified as more private individuals, this led to tangible shifts in their approach towards vulnerability in the workplace; one PGY3 said:

During the first workshop, I don’t think I talked very much because of that feeling of wanting to compartmentalize my emotions about work…I wouldn’t say that I became a super sharer by the end, by any means, but definitely I think I became more open to realizing that…it is okay to share with people…some of the frustrations I might be having, or if I’m feeling overall discouraged.

This culture of emotional openness led some residents to even reconceptualize their idea of failure: “I feel like more of my experiences are just in being a physician or a resident and not necessarily failures on my end.” By engaging with their peers on an emotional level, residents were able to recognize that emotions like shame or grief are not signifiers of failure but normal responses to tragic circumstances.

For others, NM workshops gave them the necessary space to consider their role in patients’ lives. One PGY3 said, “You are going through these very traumatic, intimate experiences…And you become this interloper in people’s dramatic points in their lives. So I definitely look at it as a privilege, which I think in residency I’ve grown to recognize more and more…that’s only enhanced within the [NM] workshop.” Recognizing their privilege and responsibility as physicians served as a buffer to the more traditional, antiquated power differential between patients and physicians.

Similarly, others emphasized how NM helped them see the value of learning from patients, flipping the traditional hierarchy:

It further elucidates that [patients] are just other people like us. That might seem very obvious. But sometimes when you go through different academic exercises to try to figure out what’s going on with patients, you’re more focused on that than the patients’ experiences themselves. [NM] sessions…show how our experiences are very much the same. And something might happen tomorrow that might put me in a position that’s the exact same as the patient I’m taking care of.

Thus, NM facilitated a needful perspective shift, bringing residents out of their gaze as medical practitioners and back to their core humanity. Residents described that the workshops prompted them to orient towards patients from their shared humanity rather than their position of power. As one PGY2 said, “[We worked] this other part of my brain and also my soul that we don’t typically get to do in the hospital.”