The International Journal of Whole Person Care
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Beyond stress reduction: A conceptual model of intrapersonal transformation through mindfulness interventions
Get PDFMindfulness-based programs are becoming increasingly common in workplace settings as a means to manage worker stress and enhance resilience.The healthcare sector has been an early-adopter of mindfulness as a means to mitigate workers’ exposure to trauma and high levels of stress, which can result in fatigue, burnout and sub-optimal patient care. In spite of the avalanche of new empirical and theoretical studies of mindfulness programs published over the past ten years, there remains a relative dearth of high-quality qualitative research describing the process and outcomes of programs from the perspective of participants, including their longitudinal impacts. This paper describes qualitative findings of an evaluation of two workplace mindfulness programs involving over 190 healthcare workers, using pre- and post-intervention qualitative surveys as well as focus groups. The study explores participant experiences, described in their own words, and the impact of these programs one year after completion. We draw on the stories gathered from participants to craft an inductive model of mindfulness and its impacts on the lives of novice practitioners. Using metaphor as a method to elucidate this model, we describe the transformative impacts of mindfulness for workers, including impacts on stress, resilience, insight and well-being.We also discuss how qualitative research methods can inform efforts to enhance the quality and evaluate the impact of mindfulness programs in the workplace.
Palliative Care SBAR - A story of forbidden love between SBAR and TWTW with some GRRRR throw in as well
Get PDFThis presentation relates the tale of forbidden love that developed between the Situation - Background - Assessment - Recommendation (SBAR) tool and Te Whare Tapa Wha (TWTW) a New Zealand Maori model of health and wellness that has led to the creation of their love-child - the Palliative Care SBAR.Clinical situations can be thought of as stories that need to be shared between healthcare practitioners at relevant times. Communication of such stories can be difficult if the participants do not have appropriate tools available. The SBAR was originally developed by the United States Navy as a communication tool, but is now widely used in healthcare settings for clinical "hand-off"/hand-overs. TWTW is a New Zealand Maori model of health and wellness first developed by Maori health expert Professor Sir Mason Durie in 1982, and has become widely used by New Zealand Palliative Care teams as it provides a framework for holistic, whole person care provision. The Greet, Respectfully listen, Review, Recommend, Reward (GRRRR) listening model provides a formula for listeners to follow. Intrigued yet? Come along to the presentation to see how a budding raconteur, James Jap, cobbles these disparate story elements together. It will be a bit different. You have been warned
Nurturing whole person care with nature
Get PDFAs part of our goal to provide Whole Person Care to our residents and families, Stedman Community Hospice is committed to integrating alternative therapies to compliment the more traditional systems of care. Our Horticultural Therapy Program was introduced in the spring of 2011 with the launch of our beautiful therapy garden. This workshop will discuss how we have since developed a comprehensive Horticultural Therapy Program in both a hospice and long-term care setting and how this type of program can benefit residents, families and staff. Discussion will include how to utilize community groups, volunteers and students to achieve and maintain a high standard of program. We hope to inspire other care facilities to embrace horticultural therapy as a means to enhance the level of care for everyone
Partnering to develop resilience in health professionals and faculty through mindfulness-based education
Get PDFGiven the pressures that exist in our health care system, health care professionals often are under significant stress to provide both quality clinical care to patients and quality teaching to their learners. We present an innovative program to develop faculty and health professional skills in reflective practice and resilience, which strengthen participants' ability to act as effective clinicians, educators, role models, and leaders. The basis of the curriculum rests in the neuroscience of mindfulness and its applications. This program was enabled through a unique partnership between acute care hospitals (Hamilton Health Sciences and St Joseph's Healthcare Hamilton), Family Health Teams (McMaster Family Health Team and Hamilton Family Health Team) and the McMaster Faculty of Health Sciences Program for Faculty Development (PFD), with additional funding support in 2013 from the Ontario Ministry of Health and Long Term Care (MOH-LTC). Data from 2013 course participants (validated measurement tools and qualitative feedback) was analyzed to evaluate the effectiveness of this initiative. This poster outlines the journey of this work and a summary of the data gathered to inform further education.
When third spaces become therapeutic: The value of complementary therapies and the search for meaning in tertiary care cancer
Get PDFThere is a side to suffering that is surprisingly resilient during times of extreme adversity.Within the context of patient-centred care, “third spaces” are public spaces that exist in-between the home and work environments that allow people to gather informally to offer support, empathy and learn from each other.With the current movement towards whole person care, patients have become increasingly vocal about the need for and the value of physical ‘third spaces” within tertiary clinical settings that provide opportunity to just be, to share, to give or to receive support. Patients who participate in meaning making workshops, yoga, creative arts therapies, or mindfulness sessions have reported the benefits of experiencing a safe place to explore difficult emotions, discover connections, and confront existential questions. TThe MUHC Cedars CanSupport is a vital non-profit program at the McGill University Health Centre under the Cancer Care Mission’s Supportive and Palliative Care Division. A variety of complementary therapies are offered individually or in groups/workshops to cancer patients and their families as adjuvant therapies to conventional cancer treatments. These therapies aim to increase self-awareness and self-expression, and to reignite agency during times of suffering.This presentation will include testimonials to describe the unique and beneficial experiences patients have derived from complementary therapies. The perspectives of healthcare providers, who are simultaneously facilitators, participants, and witnesses to the search for meaning, will also be explored. Taken together, these narratives can lead to further insight and innovative practices to facilitate the transformational potential for growth during deep suffering.
Bringing wonder into medicine: a film-based curriculum
Get PDFThe proposed workshop presents a film-based curriculum in whole person care.This curriculum includes one 37-minute film (A Certain Kind of Light – screened in 18 film festivals around the world) and six smaller films that are each 5-10 minutes in length, and are accompanied by a journaling process (all of which explore whole person care in medicine). These are not the traditional “teaching” films, but films developed from a more artistic/creative standpoint, for the purposes of affecting attitudes, as much as teaching skills. The workshop will include the following: Introduction: Discussion of how the film-based curriculum impacts culture change as much as personal change of the healthcare practitioner. Content: If there is not enough time to show all 7 films, we would present at least four of them to help the participant understand both philosophy and content of the films, illustrating how whole person care concepts can be taught through an aesthetic avenue to more immediately affect thoughts, feelings, attitudes, and behaviors. In addition, we will discuss the journaling process, clinical rounds, and research that accompany the film curriculum. Finally, the panel will join together in discussing how this type of mechanism contributes to culture shift within an organization. Those presenting in this workshop are those who developed, teach and conduct research on this curriculum. This curriculum is newly developed (as of 2017) and is being used in a variety of healthcare disciplines within one healthcare educational and clinical entity and has been requested by several others
What is preventing dentists from providing person-centred care?
Get PDFMost healthcare professions have shifted the way they teach clinical approaches from a biomedical to a person-centred perspective. Yet, dentistry remains strongly anchored in a biomedical world.The objective of this project was to understand the barriers practicing dentists face to provide what we consider person-centred care. We conducted a qualitative descriptive study that comprised semi-structured interviews with dentists in private practice in the Greater Montreal area. After the analysis, we identified six barriers:• Fear of interpersonal conflict: participants thought that engaging in genuine conversations with patients would lead to situations of disagreement and even conflicts.• Fear of litigation: dentists considered that the legal and licensing infrastructure would judge the treatment they provide through a strict biomedical framework.• Fear of loss of money: participants thought that providing person-centred care was more time consuming and thus financially penalizing. • Pleasure to excel technically: some dentists did not consider offering interventions that provided less procedural pleasure than technical ones.• Narrow interpretation of health: participants considered the biomedical dimension as the only important dimension.• Lack of information: participants knew nothing or very little about person or patient-centred care. They seemed willing to integrate it into their practice had they had known more about it.These findings should help academic institutions to design their programs on person-centred care and respond to the fears expressed by professionals.Also, legal infrastructures must recognize the paradigm shift from the biomedical to the person-centred.
Concept of architectural sphere spaces design for children with autistic spectrum disorders
Get PDFAutism is a developmental disorder of brain functions. This disorder affects many aspects of growth and development of children which causes information process occurs in different way by senses. Therefore, they overreact or showing no reaction to environment.Architectural design of educational spaces with specific characteristics of children with ASD could have a noticeable effect on increasing bodily functions which includes intellectual growth and social skills of autistic children. Architectural spaces form is an important factor in designing that causes visible effects such as child’s considerable attention at stimulants, improve visual scanning, increase the scale of visual attention moreover child focus on given exercise.This article provides solutions to designing educational spaces for children with ASD. It recommends solution in terms of spherical or hemispherical spaces design which leads to increase the sense of depth and concentration moreover increasing knowledge toward self-concept and surrounded environment in autistic children
Healing: Toward a practical definition and clinical understanding
Get PDFHealing is included as one of the fundamental goals of medicine. It is a term frequently used in health care but often poorly defined and misunderstood. The purpose of this workshop is to address this problem and will be interactive and discussion driven. We will briefly present a 'working definition' of the concept which will include an outline of the 'realms' of healing work from the diagnostic process through to management and treatment. We will use a case based introduction as a way of demonstrating our understanding of what the healing process entails. We will offer a number of alternate definitions of the term and examine the phenomenology of “lived experience” of illness using the work of Merleau-Ponty, Toombs, Cavel and Cassell and others. Existential issues which lead to the “brokenness” experienced through illness and suffering will be explored. We will open and facilitate a discussion of aspects and methods of healing with the goal being a clear and, to some degree, operationalised understanding of the concept(s) which we hope will be clinically useful and demonstrate the path(s) to “wholeness”. Areas which might be explored in the workshop will include the phenomenology of illness and suffering, the use of the clinician/patient/family relationship as the healing vehicle, intersubjectivity and empathy, the importance of narrative, collaborative and multidisciplinary care, the need to combine objective, empirical (evidence based) knowledge and subjective first person (experiential) knowledge to understand the lived experience of suffering and illness and the methodology of Person Centered and whole person care
Self-Transformations of Health Professionals in the Field
Get PDF Health does not arise from health care. Perhaps we are facing an impasse and should we reconsider and reconceptualize the mandate of the health system. In order to improve our influence on the culture that often prevails in our institutions as well as the health of those institutions. This article examines the changes to the mandate of the health system seen in the light of self-transformations. This vision is based on a model that illustrates the transformations experienced by physicians following a mind-body training, i.e. Awakening the Sensible Being (ASB). The model shows the transformation process reported by physicians, after experiencing self-awareness of what they are doing, through experiencing the ASB, while developing a closer relationship with themselves. As it turned out, the training was beneficial for their health. Their expanded sense of self-awareness and quality of “savoir-être” brought on by the training contributes to their impression of “feeling whole” and provides them with a quality of presence that influences the type of care they can provide to their patients by considering the individual as a whole. This point of view could bring about a shift in the mandate of the health system and improve the health of caregivers and care-receivers as well, while contributing to widen the concept of health