Mindful Medical Practitioners

Following up on Mindful Medical Practice, this book describes in detail how mindfulness is being taught to medical students, residents, practicing physicians, and allied health care professionals. Steps to set up and integrate programs into curricula are featured and educators’ questions concerning practical aspects of doing this work are addressed. The argument on how to promote the kinds of leadership and cultural changes necessary are also discussed along with the many challenges facing health professionals in multiple settings. Mindful Medical Practitioners is an invaluable resource that raises interest, provides a rationale and details how to integrate mindfulness into clinical work and serves as a guide for those qualified to teach it.

This book is about being mindful in clinical practice and how mindfulness enhances the quality of patient care while adding depth and meaning to a clinicians’ work. Chapters include narratives from clinicians who consciously apply mindfulness in real life settings. Authors from various settings provide examples that capture how emergent mindfulness is. Mindful Medical Practice demonstrates to physicians, residents and students how mindfulness enriches both their practices and lives.

This unique, step-by-step guide for instructors offers a comprehensive approach to teaching pre-clerkship medical students -- as well as residents and even experienced physicians -- about the transformational impact of mindful medical practice, or mindful whole person care. Indeed, integrating contemplative practices – such as “presence” and “relationship” -- into medical education is an established but still rapidly growing approach to bringing experiential learning to medical students. This book gives the rationale for administering a mindful medical practice (MMP) course, details the moment to moment process for each of the 7 classes that are outlined, and summarizes a way forward for instructors. Pages of the book can be copied and used in class with students, and there are appendices that include helpful tools a teacher can immediately copy and hand out in each class. Handy, one-page templates are provided at the end of each chapter for teachers to use as a guide while teaching each class. A unique contribution to the medical literature and the increasing focus on mindful medical practice, MD Aware: A Mindfulness-Based Whole Person Care Course Guide for Physicians is not only the ideal resource for teachers interested in setting up an MMP course in a medical school; it is also an invaluable practical guide for any clinician hoping to learn more about the importance and benefits of offering mindful medical practice to patients – and to themselves as healers.

With his “deeply informed and compassionate book…Dr. Epstein tells us that it is a ‘moral imperative’ [for doctors] to do right by their patients” (New York Journal of Books). The first book for the general public about the importance of mindfulness in medical practice, Attending is a groundbreaking, intimate exploration of how doctors approach their work with patients. From his early days as a Harvard Medical School student, Epstein saw what made good doctors great—more accurate diagnoses, fewer errors, and stronger connections with their patients. This made a lasting impression on him and set the stage for his life’s work—identifying the qualities and habits that distinguish master clinicians from those who are merely competent. The secret, he learned, was mindfulness. Dr. Epstein “shows how taking time to pay attention to patients can lead to better outcomes on both sides of the stethoscope” (Publishers Weekly). Drawing on his clinical experiences and current research, Dr. Epstein explores four foundations of mindfulness—Attention, Curiosity, Beginner’s Mind, and Presence—and shows how clinicians can grow their capacity to provide high-quality care. The commodification of health care has shifted doctors’ focus away from the healing of patients to the bottom line. Clinician burnout is at an all-time high. Attending is the antidote. With compassion and intelligence, Epstein offers “a concise guide to his view of what mindfulness is, its value, and how it is a skill that anyone can work to acquire” (Library Journal).

Simple mindfulness practices to help health care professionals of all kinds reconnect with themselves and their patients, find joy, and build resilience. Healers need healing too. Mindful Medicine shares simple mindfulness practices and brief meditations that fit easily into the demanding schedule of a healthcare worker’s day, creating an experience of less stress and more presence, connection, ease, and flow. Addressing topics such as connecting with yourself and your patients, the role of the Inner Critic in medicine, and rescue remedies for times of stress, this book offers evidence-based support for the many challenges of healthcare work. These short practices are an invitation to replenish the passion of healthcare work and douse the flickering flames of burnout.

Examining-room computers require doctors to record detailed data about their patients, yet reduce the time clinicians can spend listening attentively to the very people they are trying to help. This book presents original essays by distinguished experts in their fields, addressing this critical problem and making an urgent case for reform, because while electronic technology has revolutionized the practice of medicine, it also poses a unique challenge to health care. Smartphones in the hands of doctors and nurses have become dangerously seductive devices that can endanger their patients. Distracted Doctoring is written for anesthesiologists and surgeons, as well as general practitioners, nurses, and health care administrators and students. Chapters include Electronic Challenges to Patient Safety and Care; Distraction, Disengagement, and the Purpose of Medicine; and Managing Distractions through Advocacy, Education, and Change.

Despite its inherent joys, the challenges of parenting can produce considerable stress. These challenges multiply—and the quality of parenting suffers—when a parent or child has mental health issues, or when parents are in conflict. Even under optimal circumstances, the constant changes as children develop can tax parents' inner resources, often undoing the best intentions and parenting courses. Mindful Parenting: A Guide for Mental Health Practitioners offers an evidence-based, eight week structured mindfulness training program for parents with lasting benefits for parents and their children. Designed for use in mental health contexts, its methods are effective whether parents or children have behavioral or emotional issues. The program's eight sessions focus on mindfulness-oriented skills for parents, such as responding to (as opposed to reacting to) parenting stress, handling conflict with children or partners, fostering empathy, and setting limits. The book dovetails with other clinical mindfulness approaches, and is written clearly and accessibly so that professionals can learn the material easily and impart it to clients. Featured in the text: Detailed theoretical, clinical, and empirical foundations of the program. The complete Mindful Parenting manual with guidelines for eight sessions and a follow-up. Handouts and assignments for each session. Findings from clinical trials of the Mindful Parenting program. Perspectives from parents who have finished the course. Its clinical focus and empirical support make Mindful Parenting an invaluable tool for practitioners and clinicians in child, school, and family psychology, psychotherapy/counseling, psychiatry, social work, and developmental psychology.

A guide to mindfulness as part of a safe, patient-centered health-care and medical practice describes the author's perspective-changing experiences as a Harvard Medical student at the sides of doctors who practiced in very different ways.