| Mindfulness for GPs
Concurrent Workshop Repeated |
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| Saturday, 14 June 2014 | Start 8:30am | Duration: 55mins | Room 5 |
| Start 9:35am | Duration: 55mins | Room 5 | |
| Stress is a near-inevitable aspect of the busy professional lives most GPs lead. Traditional stress management (SM) approaches have shown mixed success and, ironically, SM training often has time demands that are incompatible with successfully juggling work and other commitments. Mindfulness training offers a time-efficient alternative. Mindfulness is a poorly understood term, often confused with religion, meditating, yoga, chanting, or other “new age” practices. It is, in fact, none of these things, but rather represents a way of attempting to cultivate a mental state characterized by continuous present moment awareness in a calm and accepting manner. Mindfulness interventions have been linked to a massive range of positive health benefits including lower stress, depression/anxiety, and exhaustion as well as better quality of life, concentration, and immune functioning. Among GPs, training in mindfulness promotes better job satisfaction, better connections with patients, and fewer diagnostic errors. Within the time constraints of professional practice, managing stress and maintaining well-being is a critical challenge for GPs. Acquiring simple tools to reduce stress and increase focus can only benefit work and health. This short workshop will cover what mindfulness is (and what it is not), how it can be practiced with minimal time demands, and how it can enhance the practice of effective medicine in primary care settings. | |||
| Barriers to Compassion in Primary Care
Main Session |
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| Sunday, 15 June 2014 | Start 11:50am | Duration: 25mins | Baytrust |
| Compassion – the desire to alleviate the suffering of others – is a critical aspect of effective clinical care. Compassion is an expectation from medical regulatory bodies, from patients, and from physicians themselves; initial data indicate that compassionate physicians promote better patient outcomes. However, while physicians are expected to care, many “burn out” and experience compassion fatigue. Currently, research treats compassion fatigue as a consequence of depleted compassion “reserves.” Given repeated exposure to patient suffering, this may not be surprising but the view has struggled to identify the specific intrapersonal, patient, environment, and system factors that might inform (ongoing) medical training or interventions. Recent studies among New Zealand physicians offer an alternative to the notion that doctors cease to care because they get tired of caring. Data from two studies are used to illustrate how distinct aspects of medical practice may interfere with compassion. Compassion is central to the professional obligations and the day-to-day work of GPs. Remaining compassionate over time is demanding and a clear target for continued professional development. Thinking about the barriers to compassion in clinical practice beyond compassion fatigue permits the identification of specific factors in physicians, patients, the clinical picture, and work environments that are amenable to change and can thus enhance both the efficacy and enjoyment of day-to-day medical practice. | |||