Can Adopting Mindfulness Practices Help Doctors Improve?

The national conversation in healthcare has been focused on macro-level solutions for years. But questions around insurance and access aren't the only challenges that healthcare professionals face. Other pressing concerns loom large in the day to-day-lives of doctors and nurses, not least among them the problem of burnout, mental exhaustion, and overexertion.

These problems are serious enough on an individual level. Taken together as a sector-wide trend, they are downright worrisome.

According to a study published in the Annals of Family Medicine, up to 60% of physicians reported experiencing burnout at some point in their careers, with as many as 40% experiencing it at any given time. More troubling, a 2014 study on Swiss intensive care units was the first to establish provider burnout as an independent predictor of mortality.

As demand for health care continues to rise, the number of primary care physicians is remaining static. In the coming years, we can expect that primary and emergency care providers will have to take on even more patients than they do now – a potential recipe for even more burnout. For the health of their patients, and for the doctors and nurses themselves, it is important that we pay attention to this steadily growing problem.

Mindfulness

The ideas and behaviors that fall under the umbrella of "mindfulness" have been gaining traction in the past decade. Put simply, mindfulness is is a state of relaxed attention to and awareness of the present moment. It is a set of mental habits that avoid anxiety-producing speculation, dwelling on fear or dread, daydreaming, tuning out, or shutting down.

A mindfulness practice is usually oriented around a once- or twice-daily meditation routine of no more than 20 minutes. The aim, though, is not to achieve transcendence while meditating. Instead, it is to carry the lessons of that meditation–bodily awareness, healthy regulation of stress responses, attention to the present moment–into daily life, even into high-stress situations. 

More and more, mindfulness is finding enthusiastic support in academic and business settings. Encouraged by research that positively correlates stress reduction, better cognition, and other benefits with even modest practices of mindfulness meditation, companies, schools, and other institutions are encouraging the practice.

How Can Mindfulness Help?

So what does mindfulness have to offer healthcare practitioners? While patients probably won't be able to meditate themselves back to perfect health, advocates like Dr. Ronald M. Epstein argue that when doctors and nurses practice mindfulness techniques, the effects can be far-reaching.

As mentioned above, burnout can sap productivity and accuracy. Epstein notes that the high-pressure environment and information overload that doctors face in most busy hospitals can lead to lapses in attention and even diagnostic errors.

He points to the problem of “premature closure,” the tendency to see a set of symptoms and to grab the first diagnosis that fits regardless of any discordant information, as one place where mindfulness training can help.

Moreover, burnout can make doctors and nurses less empathetic. A loss of empathy may seem like a touchy-feely problem, but it has real medical implications.

In one study, doctors who took a mindfulness course were more focused on what their patients were saying and more likely to ask follow-up questions. This led the patients in the study to be more open with those doctors about what they were feeling, giving their doctors potentially crucial information.  

As the study’s author noted, “We clinicians are not always fully present for patients because our minds are always working. But when we don’t listen, we end up giving explanations that are too long and complicated and responses that they don’t need or want.”

What’s more, integrating mindfulness into a healthcare environment doesn’t have to entail a total institutional shift in priorities, nor extensive time off for training. Studies have found that even “bare minimum” mindfulness trainings for doctors – one weekend and two evening classes, supplemented by online resources – had measurable effects on burnout.  

Patient Outcomes

And it's not just healthcare providers who stand to benefit from mindfulness techniques. The same practices that can ease stress and overextension among healthcare providers can help ease patients' feelings of anxiety and powerlessness. 

The National Health Service in the UK has started to offer mindfulness training as part of its offerings for psychological health. Hospital staff members are encouraged to share mindfulness techniques with their patients as well, to reduce general tension and aid communication.

Moreover, mindfulness training may have implications for preventable disease as well. Smoking-related illness and obesity are both linked to unmanaged stress, and represent a huge proportion of the preventable illnesses that healthcare providers treat. By using mindfulness training to supplement other forms of public health outreach, the hospitals of the future may be called on less and less to treat patients suffering from these conditions.

Takeaways

The healthcare sector in America is already facing a problem of overextension. Doctors and nurses are working longer hours and seeing more patients than they ever have before. And demand for their services is only going up.

The dangers that burnout poses to patients and hospital staff alike are too serious to ignore. At the same time, any solution can’t take up much time or focus away from the task at hand. With its unobtrusive, easy-to-learn habits, the practice of mindfulness seems a perfect fit.