Programs
We offer in-person and online retreat-like workshops designed to energize your clinical work, help you understand and combat burnout, and find joy and resilience, through honing your self-awareness and deep listening skills that are keys to flourishing at work and navigating stressful and demanding situations you face daily.
Curious what’s included with our programs? Read more about our program’s components and themes for details.
Our programs provide an experiential and interactive learning environments. Our approach is evidence based – reduce burnout, improve well-being, engagement with work, and patient-centered compassionate care.
Upcoming Programs
New Online Self-Study Course
A 7-hour skills-building course built for enhancing your well-being and addressing clinician burnout.
Other Events
What to expect from our programs
Frequently Asked Questions
What are the benefits?
Mindfulness and Mindful Practice programs have been associated with lower clinician burnout and psychological distress, greater clinician well-being, more empathic and effective patient-clinician relationships, improved patient safety, lower implicit racial bias, fewer diagnostic errors, fewer medication errors, and better teamwork.
Why would health professionals want to add more training into their already busy lives?
RON: Physicians are distressed. Even if we can put needed changes in the healthcare environment into effect, healthcare will remain intrinsically complex and emotionally demanding. The author, Stephen R. Covey, emphasizes “sharpening the saw” when considering habits of highly effective people. Mindful Practice in Medicine is sharpening the saw of our attention, being clear about our sense of purpose, managing challenges and uncertainty, and caring for ourselves in the interest of being more effective in what we can do.
MICK: To paraphrase Hippocrates, the art and craft of medicine take a lifetime, life is short, the opportunities are fleeting, and our judgment complex and difficult. To quote a highly-respected, evidence-drived and highly analytical physician with over 20 years of practice experience who participated in a workshop several years ago: I have been in practice for many years, and have had to engage in CME every year. I am not sure I have ever used anything I learned in a CME course in my practice or in my life. This course is the first experience I have ever had that was truly CONTINUING MEDICAL EDUCATION. And I use what I have learned daily.
Why should my medical or nursing school consider holding a Mindful Practice workshop?
Mindful Practice workshops are evidence-based programs that offer skills for clinicians and leaders to respond more effectively to stresses in clinical practice, form better connections with their patients and colleagues, and be more attentive and thoughtful in their clinical practice.
Is a Mindful Practice workshop suitable for a healthcare corporation team?
Absolutely. The same practices that promote clear intention, focused attention, critical curiosity, beginner’s mind and presence can promote effective leadership and teamwork, enhanced ability to deal with conflict and adversity, and lower rates of burnout, distress, and attrition.
Are CME credits available?
Yes, for all of our programs.
Are these workshops suitable for people who already have meditation routine or other mindfulness habit worked into their lives?
RON: Mindful Practice workshops build skills that can be applied during every day work in whatever work setting you find yourself. Formal meditation is valuable for many of us, and we strongly encourage participants to develop some kind of regular contemplative practice, even if only for a few minutes per day. However, the mindfulness that really “counts” is what you can do while at work and at home, dealing with the complexities and stresses intrinsic to our lives. Mindful Practice programs focus on approaching the most challenging aspects of our work lives with awareness, attention, curiosity, beginner’s mind and presence. Imagine a mindful resuscitation attempt. A mindful path through a difficult conflict with a patient or colleague. A mindful response to an unanticipated surgical complication. A mindful approach to a student in difficulty. Even those with significant experience with contemplative practices need a new set of skills to be able to bring their capacity for focus and presence to the complex world of medicine.
MICK: The approaches taught in Mindful Practice in Medicine are definitely suitable and would be useful for participants with any level of meditation/mindfulness/contemplative experiences. Because we have combined some of the powerful aspects of narrative medicine and appreciative inquiry in this approach, and because there is so much about the approach that is relational and interactive, Mindful Practice in Medicine adds new dimensions to contemplative practices that at times can be individual and self-directed experiences. And the tools that we share in our workshops can be truly helpful in bridging the “on the cushion” meditative practice to “with the patient” medical practice, tools that can be practiced and used on a daily basis, requiring very little time, yet benefiting the little time we do have with our patients, colleagues and staff.
What size group is ideal?
We offer workshops for as few as 10 and as many as 150 participants. For larger groups, we break out into smaller sub-groups for some of the exercises and discussion, each with a facilitator.
Who should attend?
Mindful Practice workshops can be helpful for anyone in healthcare: clinicians, trainees, non-clinician staff, leadership. They can encompass academic medical centers, hospitals, clinics, and corporate settings. We alter the curricula to adapt to the needs of each group. Mixed groups are fine for many of the exercises; other have to be adapted because clinical contexts might be different. For example, errors, moral distress and conflicts may manifest differently for students, nurses, physicians and administrators. While entire work teams can participate, including leadership, we try to avoid pairing those in hierarchical and reporting relationships in exercises that might bring up personal information or bad outcomes.
How long is a typical workshop?
A 2-day immersion provides a depth of experience that cannot be achieved by shorter workshops. Sometimes we can break up the content into two 1-day experiences. In addition, a series of videoconferences after the in-person programs can reinforce content and maintain a supportive professional community. Longer 3- or 4-day workshops are available, some of which are residential.
The Mindful Practice in Medicine Facilitator Manual
Our Facilitator Manual contains materials that we use for our 4-day intensive workshops for physicians and medical educators. The 580-page manual also contains 13 modules with descriptive guidelines and PowerPoint slides. Electronic copies now available for purchase.
Register now
Spots are filling-up for our next Mindful Practice Workshop. Register today to be sure to get your place.
