Do you ever ponder what you’re thinking about just before you enter a patient’s room? Are you mentally going over the cases you’ve already handled today and preparing for the heaps of administrative tasks to do later? But what if you stopped, if only for a brief moment, as your hand touches the door knob, inhale and gather yourself in the present, disconnecting yourself from past and future concerns? Everyone has the capacity to do this, reassures Dr. Ronald M. Epstein – a medicine professor at University of Rochester, New York, who focuses on family and palliative care. He’s also the author of “Attending: Medicine, Mindfulness, and Humanity”. He uses the concept of the doorknob in his internationally acclaimed lectures about mindfulness, although he admits to being a skeptical person by nature.
According to Dr. Epstein, it’s important for those who work amidst intense human suffering like doctors to be conscious of their inner lives. This is key to manage personal stress, enhance compassion and minimize clinical errors. The concept of mindfulness, with its roots in Buddhist and yogic traditions, has been popularized in the West through the works of Jon Kabat-Zinn, professor emeritus at the University of Massachusetts.
For those looking at mindfulness as a means of focusing and reducing stress, six mindfulness techniques are available to try. These include pausing, mindful breathing, and walking mindfulness. Other exercises recommend observing your thoughts, increasing your awareness of your feet and trying new experiences. It’s like doing habitual tasks but with the wonder and curiosity of a child doing it for the first time.
However, as beneficial as mindfulness can be, it isn’t a cure-all. Those who are unwell will need to reap the benefits of mindfulness as part of a comprehensive treatment plan. While some doctors find it challenging to establish regular practices, they are advised to integrate mindfulness into their normal routines, such as taking breaks, going for short walks, or being mindful while drinking coffee.
There are numerous mindfulness exercises, and physicians can integrate these into their daily routines in creative ways. You can start your journey to mindfulness by treating every patient interaction as an opportunity to pay full attention to the patient. Think of practicing mindfulness as going to the gym – it’s something you should do and you need to make time for. Like a regular gym routine, you start seeing the benefits when you get into a rhythm. You could begin by taking those 3-second pauses each time you’re about to see a new patient. Try it the next time you touch the door handle to your patient’s room.