Mindful Practice - Focus on Serious & Life-Limiting Illness

This looks like a valuable workshop in New York from May 1 to 4, with faculty Ron Epstein, Tony Back, Tim Quill, and Peter Sullivan.



Summary



With the aging of the baby boom generation, health care reform and advances in medical technology, clinicians face increasingly complex and difficult situations involving care of patients with serious and life-limiting illnesses. These illnesses, including but not limited to metastatic cancer, neurodegenerative diseases, heart failure and multi-organ failure, present both biomedical and personal challenges to the clinicians who provide such care. Yet, in their clinical training, those who provide this care receive little education and support to develop the attentiveness, skills and personal resilience required to approach this work with compassion and presence, and to prevent burnout. These challenges are amplified by the increasing pace, complexity, regulatory requirements and financial challenges of medical practice.



Workshop Goals and Objectives



This workshop is designed to improve the quality of care that clinicians provide while improving their own resilience and well-being. This program will develop participants’ capacity for mindfulness in clinical practice and education – attentiveness, situation awareness, self-awareness, teamwork and self-monitoring in stressful and demanding situations – with the intention of providing better care to patients and to take better care of ourselves. Themes of the workshop sessions will include difficult discussions with patients and families, witnessing and responding to suffering, symptom management, difficult decisions, uncertainty, end-of-life care, ethical dilemmas, working in teams, self-care and compassion. Sessions incorporate interactive presentations, formal and informal mindfulness practice, narrative and appreciative dialogue exercises, and discussion.



Intended Audience



For medical practitioners (physicians, NPs, PAs) and educators who work in Intensive/Critical Care, Hospital Medicine, Oncology, Primary Care, Palliative Care, Hospice and other settings in which clinicians face serious illness and mortality.