I almost died in a horrific car accident 2 years ago, prevailing through the most terrifying time of my life. I had practiced meditation for 4 years prior for an hour a day. Mindfulness practices “kicked in” when I needed them for 5 months of hospitalization and rehabilitation. Restorative practices worked on autopilot for resilience in my own emergency. Members of my medical treatment team would ask me what I was doing, sitting with my eyes closed. When I told them that I was calming my mind for healing, they replied “I wish I could relax like that, I have to distract myself from feeling like I’m coming out of my skin.”
Medical professionals could benefit from restorative strategies, sustaining their own resilience while immersed in the turbulent demands of billing, coding and electronic medical records.
Doctors are treading dangerously while serving us. Physicians are at high risk for suicide, addictions, helplessness in the face of exorbitant debt and debilitating symptoms of burnout. Impairment and medical mistakes rise like extraordinary storm tides to a crises level. Compassion fatigue and chronic stress threaten to erode the ranks of Health Care Professionals.
Medical professionals are a dying breed. Over 50% of doctors discourage anyone from choosing medicine as a career.
Medical professionals are swamped in an ocean of emergencies with ceaseless waves of systemic distress. As one physician stated, “In the pressurized world of contemporary outpatient medicine, there is simply no time to think. With every patient, we race to cover the bare minimum, sprinting in subsistence-level intellectual mode because that’s all that’s sustainable.”
Diaphragmatic breathing can be a life preserver for medical professionals until their medical practice model can be salvaged and transformed:
- Sit tall in a comfortable, upright position;
- Begin by exhaling, gently push all the air out by bringing the navel towards the spine;
- Inhale deeply and slowly, fill in the bottom, middle and top of the breathing passage (abdomen, chest to collar bone);
- Exhale slower than the inhale, exhale completely;
- Eventually count to 3 on the inhale and 6 on the exhale, continue this 3-part breath, as needed.
It’s time to throw our brave medical crew a life-line.
Beyond the financial waste, modern medical practice is a petri dish for medical error, patient harm and physician burnout.
The New England Journal of Medicine