RMD - 726 Mindfulness in Medicine

Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction is a curriculum taught for more than 30 years that teaches skills, drawn largely from mindfulness (or insight) meditation traditions, that: promote the capacity for holding experience in non-judgmental awareness; and cultivates patience, compassion (to self and other), clarity during moments of emotional distress, quicker resolution of stress reactivity, and creative responses to stressors. This has been taught to, and researched, in (among other cohorts) persons with medical symptoms and chronic diseases, and medical students. MBSR, or a variation of MBSR, is a part of most University based Integrative Health programs. In “Mindfulness Practice in Clinical Care”, we will teach the MBSR curriculum in the first “trimester”, then apply what has been learned in a way to learn to attend to suffering in effective ways during clinical encounters.

Student will be evaluated on: attendance to, and participation in, group sessions (at least 15/18 sessions). Discussion of diary entries will be a major portion of discussion. Each student will be asked to maintain their diary in a Word document (or handwritten in a folder or notebook) and submit a copy to the course instructor at the end of the course (removing any aspects that they feel are too personal to share in writing). Elective