Dr. Lu receives 2024 WA-ACEP Wellness Award

The Department of Emergency Medicine proudly announces that Dr. Dave Lu has received the 2024 WA-ACEP Wellness Award.

The Washington ACEP Wellness Award recognizes physicians, nurses, administrators or others who have worked to improve the wellness of emergency physicians in the state. In turn, the hope is that celebrating these efforts will help disseminate best practices that others could adopt in their EDs.

As Director of Faculty Wellness and Professional Fulfillment, Lu has worked to implement meaningful initiatives. He recently secured two Wellness Grants for the department that focus on improving physician wellness and preventing burnout.

Here's what EM faculty had to say about Lu in their nomination submissions:

"Dave has led the UW DEM Wellness Committee for 2 years and has implemented a variety of concrete, meaningful initiatives that have positively impacted wellness. Most notably, a system for tracking night and weekend shift distribution, leading to increased transparency and equity around scheduling. Also, has applied for and received grants to support faculty dinners outside of work at volunteers' homes, as well as a project to improve attending shared workspaces at each of the 3 campuses. Dave's enthusiasm and determination to improve his colleagues' work experience is inspiring and drives those of us who serve on the Wellness Committee to continue to work for change."

"As Director of Faculty Wellness and Professional Fulfillment, Dr. Dave Lu has lead many initiatives for improving the well-being of our faculty group. This has included last year's submission of two separate proposals for the UW Medicine Wellness Grant, with both receiving partial funding. He has worked with UW Medicine's Associate Dean for Well-Being, Dr. Anne Browning, in parsing data obtained from the UW Medicine 2022 Workforce Survey, to determine focus areas to help increase well-being within our faculty group. This has lead to increased discussion and idea generation on various impactful topics, such as scheduling."

Congratulations, Dr. Lu!