Mindfulness and Personal Reflection

Department:      Center for Research and Innovation of Medical Education
Supervisor:       L.C. Aukes PhD

 Encouragement of students to function in a mindful and reflective way is one of the most appealing challenges in medical education in the past decade. Its aim is to become an excellent and balanced doctor. A balanced doctor is focussed on (a) the improvement of patient care, (b) inter-professional relationships, (c) expertise development and (d) his or hers own well-being.

 The central competence to acquire and maintain such a balance in professional and personal life is reflection. This competence is divided into 4 components: (1) mindfulness, (2) self-reflection, (3) reflection with patients / family and (4) reflection with colleagues / professionals.

 The workshop is focused some basic techniques of the first component, mindfulness. Mindfulness means: being attentive / aware of one’s experience in the present moment, without judgment, the regulation of attention.

 The most familiar form of reflection in medicine is scientific reflection. Scientific reflection is mainly oriented towards clinical reasoning and literature in order to optimize the degree of evidence-based clinical judgments.

The complementary form of reflection is personal reflection, which is mainly oriented towards one’s experience. Personal reflection is: the careful exploration and appraisal of experience, thus clarifying and creating meaning for the benefit of balanced functioning, learning and development.

 Structure of the workshop:

1: Introduction: what is mindfulness and personal reflection, and why are they relevant for doctors and students?
2: Practicing some basic techniques of mindfulness (laying or sitting on soft mats on the ground or sitting on a chair)
3: Evaluation