Q&A: Free mindfulness summit aims to support physician well-being amid burnout ‘crisis’

Burnout, stress and suicide rates have reached “crisis levels” among health care professionals, according to the AMA Alliance.

In a survey conducted last year by the Kaiser Family Foundation and The Washington Post, 62% of health care workers on the frontline of the pandemic said that stress related to COVID-19 has had a negative affect on their mental health.

To support the well-being of health care professionals, Mindful Communications, a public benefit corporation, is hosting a free virtual event that will feature conversations, meditations and panel discussions with more than 40 experts in health care and mindfulness.

The Healing Healthcare Summit is being held from Feb. 8 to Feb. 10, but all the content will be available online through Feb. 20, according to the organization. Those who are interested in attending the event can register on the Healing Healthcare Summit website.

Healio spoke with summit planning committee member Mark Bertin, MD, an assistant professor of pediatrics at New York Medical College, American Professional Society of ADHD and Related Disorders, to learn more about the summit and what attendees can expect to take away from it.

Healio: Please tell us about the summit and its mission.

Bertin: The summit aims to provide something accessible and practical to physicians that they can use to stay resilient and take care of themselves through everything that’s going on. Although these issues predate the pandemic, stress and burnout are longstanding challenges that are now a full-blown crisis.

During particularly difficult times, it’s useful to reframe mindfulness as a practice that helps build our resilience. One big concern that people have when thinking about mindfulness is that it’s not something they can do or have time for. But it’s not about always feeling good or always staying calm. It’s not something you can be good or bad at. It’s more of an acknowledgement that if we take the time to build perspectives that keep us at our best more often, that has really huge value.

Certainly, some of mindfulness has to do with helping us feel better and more resilient, but in medicine, it’s also valuable to acknowledge that when we take the time to care for ourselves — to settle ourselves and come back to our own best intentions, not expecting perfection but just doing the best we can — we will interact with everyone else differently. Our mindfulness practice influences our ability to care for other people, communicate, and to be empathetic. For any caretakers, it helps stay motivated when recognizing we’re not practicing a cliche of self-help. The premise is much bigger than that. It’s about taking care of ourselves in this way so we can influence the world with more skill.

Healio: What are your most important aspirations for this meeting?

Bertin: Any time I’m trying to get the idea of mindfulness out into the world, the most important goal is to make it real for people and practical. There’s nothing anyone says that’s going to influence how someone else is living unless we make mindfulness connect for them enough that they're motivated and try it.

I think in medicine, in particular, it’s kind of cool to be able to balance both a general discussion of how to practice mindfulness, along with talking about what the research says about the practice of mindfulness. My hope would be that there’s enough realistic, practical information at the event that people will connect with it and use mindfulness in a way that helps them day to day. And there’s a ton of great speakers and resources.

One of the great teachers of mindfulness, Joseph Goldstein, talks about framing mindfulness as training ourselves to relate skillfully to whatever is actually going on in life. So, it’s not necessarily being OK with whatever is happening. It’s recognizing that with practice we can approach situations in ways that make them easier for us and for everyone else too.

Healio: What are some concrete examples of how the meeting can help health care professionals combat burnout?

Bertin: In the big picture, I think there’s a lot of great information that’s going to be shared during the conference that will help people see different aspects of mindfulness and how to utilize them in health care. I was involved with one of the talks that has to do with integrating mindfulness across the hospital as a system, for example. So, for people who have interest in learning about ways we can apply mindfulness to influence ourselves and the health care system, there’s an awful lot to be gained from that.

The speakers also emphasize practical ways to build this into your really busy life. How do you get started, and how do you fit it into your schedule? There’s often a fear or concern that there is not enough time for this type of practice, and that’s usually not real.

Even on a busy day, there’s a way to carve out a short time to clear our minds, or step out of an escalating cycle of stress. Sharon Salzberg is another wonderful person and teacher in the field, and speaker at the conference; she talks about using small doses of mindfulness many times a day. The idea is that there’s value to coming back to the practice in ways that are brief but consistent that begin to influence how we’re feeling.

Healio: What are you looking forward to most during the meeting?

Bertin: A lot of the teaching I've been doing explores the broader ways our own mindfulness practice affects other people, like communicating well, or staying in touch with compassion even with people we find difficult. The choices we make either escalate or deescalate the fear and reactivity and chaos that we're all immersed in right now. There are several different talks that have to do with those ideas and those are the ones I’m most looking forward to. Although, there are many great speakers, of course.

Healio: Anything else to add?

Bertin: Mindfulness is something I felt really fortunate to be introduced to as a resident just before it became ubiquitous around the country. It’s always been incredibly useful to me in both my personal and work life. I hope people find the time to visit the conference and learn something valuable to try out for themselves.

References:

AMA Alliance. Physician burnout. https://amaalliance.org/physician-burnout/. Accessed Feb. 7, 2022.

Kaiser Family Foundation. KFF/The Washington Post Frontline Health Care Workers Survey. https://www.kff.org/report-section/kff-the-washington-post-frontline-health-care-workers-survey-toll-of-the-pandemic/. Published April 6, 2021. Accessed Feb. 7, 2022.

Mindful. Healing Healthcare. https://healthcare.mindful.org/2022summit/. Accessed Feb. 7, 2022.