2 - Mindfulness In Medicine Flashcards
What problems/challenges are students currently facing in medical education?
- Increased perceptions of mental health problems in students
- Decreased resilience
- Increasing information to process
- Poor communication
- Typical characteristics of medical students (perfectionism, shame surrounding admitting uncertainty, problems seeking help etc.)
What is burnout?
- State of mental and physical exhaustion related to work or care-giving activities
- Emotional exhaustion
- Depersonalisation/detachment
- Reduced sense of personal achievement
Depressed doctors make ~……x more medication errors than non-depressed
6.2
Medical error is …….. biggest cause of death in USA.
Third
What is attention deficit trait?
- Response to a hyperkinetic environment (too many inputs)
- Black and white thinking (lacks perspective)
- Difficulty staying organised and prioritising
- Feel constant low-level panic and guilt
What is multi-tasking?
- An illusion (misnomer)
- Actually are task-switching to appear like we’re doing many things at once
How do mobile devices effect cognitive capacity?
- Can avoid temptation to check phones but even the presence of devices reduces available cognitive capacity
What is rumination?
- Dwelling on thoughts / overthinking
- Get prolonged low mood and reduced problem solving ability
What is allostatic load?
Prolonged stress leads to wear-and-tear on the body (allostatic load)
- Impaired immunity, atherosclerosis, metabolic syndrome, bone demineralisation
- Nerve cell atrophy in hippocampus and prefrontal cortex
- Growth of amygdala (fear response)
How does stress affect the telomeres?
- Stress associated with higher oxidative stress and lower telomerase activity
- Telomeres become shorter
- Known determinants of cell death/longevity
What effect does mindfulness have on cellular ageing?
Slows genetic ageing and enhances genetic repair
What is flow?
What effect does mindfulness have on flow?
- a psychological state when an individual is challenged but has the skill level to match
- outstanding levels of performance
- memorable experiences
Mindfulness increases focus on the task at hand and so increases flow
Give some disadvantages of unmindfulness.
- Wasting time
- Mental blocks
- Poor emotional wellbeing
- Not enjoying life
- Poor sleep
- Poor communication
- More distracted
- Lack motivation
- Poor memory
What are the stages in Prochaska & DiClemente’s cycle of behaviour change?
- Pre-contemplation - no intention to change
- Contemplation - aware of the problem
- Preparation - intending to take action
- Action - modifying behaviour
- Maintenance - sustained change
- Relapse - fall back to old patterns
What is motivational interviewing?
Directive counselling style for eliciting behaviour change, helping clients to explore and resolve uncertainty.
