In 2018, I was interning as a communications specialist at the Center for Health Innovation and Implementation Science (CHIIS), IU School of Medicine. That year, I was fortunate to have attended the Healthcare Thinkathon’ event hosted by them at the Hilton in downtown Indianapolis. The theme of the conference centered around transforming the current health care system through ‘Agile Implementation’. There were many inspiring keynote speakers who shared their stories with the attendees that day. One of the talks that caught my attention was by Greg Burdulis. Greg, a former monk, who is the creator of ‘The Power of Presence’ on ‘Mindfulness and Meditation’.
We all know that stress and burnout has reached epidemic levels in the healthcare industry. The consequences are detrimental and include negative effects on patient care, professionalism, and professionals’ own care and safety. Mindfulness is, therefore, an effective intervention to prevent and reduce burnout that brings presence, focus, and joy to the practice. It is especially suited to healthcare professionals because it can help counteract the worrying, perfectionism and self-judgment that are so common among them. Mindfulness can help professionals listen more carefully to their patients, show more compassion, and approach problems in a fresh, open-minded way. When practiced consistently, the results of mindfulness are real and very far-reaching. In the largest sense, mindfulness allows you to live in harmony with the realities of the world. It helps you to embrace life’s ever-changing impermanence, to live in peace with the inevitable ups and downs of being human, and to feel deeply connected to the whole of life.
So, what is mindfulness? To be mindful is to be fully aware of the here and now. Mindfulness is the art of being in the moment. This practice is focused primarily on attention to or being aware of your thoughts, emotions, and physical sensations as they are happening without being swept away by them. Training mindfulness is a pathway to creating more intensity and awareness in life. The greater your ability to direct your attention, the better you will get at distancing yourself from distracting thoughts that keep recirculating in your head. You will find it easier to concentrate and easier to relax. Your mind will calm down. In short, mindful training is brain training.
How do we benefit? Mindfulness doesn’t change what happens to us; it changes the way we choose to react to it. By practicing mindfulness, you will learn to make conscious choices. This will allow you to nip stress triggers and change how you deal with unhelpful thought patterns. It will create a higher state of awareness and better enable you to guard your boundaries.
Studies have shown that mindfulness increases the quality of life. It brings about positive change in our cognitive and neurobiological dynamics. Mindfulness also transforms the way in which someone views themselves and the world, and how they respond to their surroundings. This kind of wide-ranging efficacy is what makes mindfulness such a valuable practice for so many people.
Some of the effects of mindfulness training include:
• Greater awareness of and insight into thought patterns, responses, actions, emotions, and moods (and the ability to handle things differently when you need to)
• Ability to step back from your problems
• Life becomes easier and you experience things more consciously and intensely
• Energy-resources become more readily available
Mindfulness training often also produces the following effects:
• Better ability to deal with stressful events, thereby reducing stress symptoms such as high blood pressure, tiredness, sleeplessness
• Better ability to focus
• Better ability to set boundaries (greater awareness)
• Reduction in depression and anxiety
• Reduction in chronic pain
• Reduction in the mental fallout of serious illness and setbacks
Mindfulness is a skill that everyone can practice and home. Yes, it may be a challenge at first to set aside time, but it is doable and has the potential to transform the lives of healthcare professionals and those around them.
Citations
Burdulis, G. (2018). The Power of Presence. Retrieved from https://thepowerofpresence.net
CVM (n.d). What is Mindfulness? Retrieved from https://centrumvoormindfulness.nl/en/mindfulness-courses/what-is-mindfulness
Hutchinson, T. A., & Dobkin, P. L. (2009). Mindful medical practice: just another fad?Canadian Family Physician, 55(8), 778–779.
West, Dyrbye, Erwin, & Shanafelt. (2016). Interventions to prevent and reduce physician burnout: A systematic review and meta-analysis.The Lancet, 388(10057), 2272-2281.
Life Is Like That! 