Mindfulness: the quality of being fully present and attentive in the moment during everyday activities.

Despite our best intentions, the health system can oftentimes slide into a dehumanising experience for healthcare workers.
The overwhelming waves of white-cap workloads, chronic stress levels, and compassion fatigue can converge to sweep the feet from under the most experienced practitioner, leaving them flailing.

We often forget that to look after our patients, we need first to look after ourselves.
One strategy that is gaining increasing credibility in mainstream medicine is the use of mindfulness practice to anchor, enrich and dare I say it, deepen our experiences and interactions with our patients and colleagues..

Speaking personally, I can say that developing some simple techniques in mindfulness and meditation, has rescued me from certain burn-out on more than one occasion.
And from a veritable explode-out on others.
Mindfulness, is not just for defusing our personal destructive payloads, it opens up a great space in your work.
When I do manage to remember to be mindful for any length of time, things begin to change. I begin to see instead of just looking. I begin to feel instead of just touching. It makes me a better nurse.
Thats not to say you will see me floating around the emergency department in some sort of full-lotus rapture.  I am by no means an expert or exemplar in these practices, I can still get my mega-frazzle on. Just ask Kelly.
But I have written before about my own experiences of integrating a little mindfulness into the hospital environment.   
What I call Vertical Nursing. (Go have a read.)

And this months  Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) reports on a study to determine whether an intensive program in mindfulness, communication and   and self-awareness is associated with improvement in primary care physicians’ well-being, psychological distress, burnout, and capacity for relating to patients.
The study found sustained improvements in well-being and attitudes associated with patient centered care.
Staff experienced improved personal well-being, increased empathy and psychosocial beliefs and a reduction in feelings of emotional exhaustion, and depersonalization.

“The term mindfulness refers to a quality of awareness that includes the ability to pay attention in a particular way: on purpose, in the present moment, and nonjudgmentally.
Mindfulness includes the capacity for lowering one’s own reactivity to challenging experiences; the ability to notice, observe, and experience bodily sensations, thoughts, and feelings even though they may be unpleasant; acting with awareness and attention (not being on autopilot); and focusing on experience, not on the la- bels or judgments applied to them.”

The course was based on 3 techniques: mindfulness meditation techniques, the use of narrative medicine, and appreciative inquiry which involved focusing attention and awareness through telling of, listening to, and reflecting on personal stories.

And in a paper published this year in the College of Family Physicians of Canada Professor Tom Hutchinson discusses some of the empirical evidence on the benefit of mindfulness practice by health care workers as well as looking at the results of a small study conducted at McGill University in Montreal.

“How do you foster a practice that is aimed at improving the well-being of practitioners and the quality of the medicine that they practise? …. we combine training in mindfulness with communication exercises and role playing. Participants (physicians, nurses, psychologists, and other health care practitioners) practise being mindful in reality-based clinical interactions with patients and colleagues. Preliminary analyses of the pilot data from an 8-week mindfulness-based medical practice course with 27 health care professionals showed that participants had enhanced awareness of and ability to disengage from ruminative thoughts, and they reported increases in self-care practices and psychological well-being after the course.”
:: Mindful medical practice: just another fad? ::

No matter if you are just dipping your toe into the nursing profession or up to your neck treading water in it, I cannot recommend highly enough taking some time to explore and develop your own mindfulness/meditation activities. And to integrate it into your practice as a regular and sustained activity.

It will save your life.