Mindful Medicine

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.

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.

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).

Before she became a Buddhist nun in the tradition of Thich Nhat Hanh, Sister Dang Nghiem was a doctor. She’d traveled far in her 43 years. Born during the Tet Offensive and part of the amnesty for Amerasian children of the late 1970s, Dang Nghiem arrived in this country virtually penniless and with no home. She lived with three foster families, but graduated high school with honors, earned two undergraduate degrees, and became a doctor. When the man she thought she’d spend her life with suddenly drowned, Sister Dang Nghiem left medicine and joined the monastic community of Thich Nhat Hanh. It is from this vantage point that Dang Nghiem writes about her journey of healing. Devastated by the diagnosis and symptoms of Lyme, she realized that she was also reliving many of the unresolved traumas from earlier in her life. She applied both her medical knowledge and her advanced understanding and practice of mindfulness to healing. Through meditation she finally came to understand what it means to "master" suffering. In Mindfulness as Medicine Sister Dang Nghiem leads readers through her profound journey of healing and shares step-by-step directions for the techniques she used to embrace and transform her suffering. "Suffering can be transformed and cured at its roots...Suffering is an art that can be learned and mastered...We do not have to run away from it anymore...The art of suffering can bring about deep appreciation for life as well as profound peace, joy, and love for ourselves and other beings."—Sister Dang Nghiem

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.

"Perhaps our real work, whether offering or seeking care, is to recognize that the healing relationship--the field upon which patient and practitioner meet--is, to use the words of the mythologist Joseph Campbell, a 'self-mirroring mystery'--the embodiment of a singular human activity that raises essential questions about self, other, and what it means to heal thy self." --Saki Santorelli Today we are experiencing extraordinary technological advances in the diagnosis and treatment of illness while at the same time learning to take more responsibility for our own health and well-being. In this book, Saki Santorelli, director of the nationally acclaimed Stress Reduction Clinic, explores the ancient roots of medicine, and shows us how to introduce mindfulness into the crucible of the healing relationship, so that both patients and caregivers begin to acknowledge that we are all wounded and we are all whole. His approach revolutionizes the dynamics of the patient/practitioner relationship. In describing the classes at the clinic and the transformation that takes place in this alchemical process, he offers insights and effective methods for cultivating mindfulness in our everyday lives. As he reveals the inner landscape of his own life as a health care professional and we join him and those with whom he works on this journey of human suffering and courage, we become aware of and honor what is darkest and brightest within each one of us.

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.

The essential primer on surviving the rigors of medical school--and thriving there--through the application of self-knowledge, self-care, and self-control