Mindfulness Meditation May Help Doctors Provide Better Care, Study Suggests

Huffington Post:

Mindfulness meditation doesn’t just lower stress and regulate our emotions — it could also improve a doctor’s ability to care for his or her patient, according to a new study.

Researchers from the University of Rochester Medical Center found that training doctors in mindfulness meditation helped them to listen better and not be as judgmental both at home and at work. The study will be published in the June issue of the journal Academic Medicine.

For the study, doctors in Rochester, N.Y., participated in a mindfulness meditation training course that consisted of eight weekly two-and-a-half-hour sessions, one all-day session, and then 10 monthly two-and-a-half-hour sessions of mindfulness training. The researchers interviewed 20 of these doctors after the training program.

The researchers found that 60 percent of the doctors said that the training helped them to be more attentive listeners, and more than 50 percent said that they were more self aware and less judgmental in conversations.

Read the whole story: Huffington Post