Cultivate mindfulness.

While we deal with many of the same pressures that my mentor felt -- decreasing autonomy, increasing administrative requirements, less control over our practice -- the demands on our attention have gone, well, viral.

 Pauline Chen in her NY Times column: DOCTOR AND PATIENT; Practicing Mindfulness as Well as Medicine


So here's yet another similarity between teachers and physicians.

In this ever-widening sea of distractions, all that once gave meaning to our work -- ..., the lifetime relationships -- have turned quaintly insufficient.

Doctors who are burned out are more likely to depersonalize their patients, to treat them as objects rather than as individuals suffering from disease. These physicians exhibit less empathy and are more prone to making errors. And they are more vulnerable to depression and more likely to leave a profession that is already facing severe shortages in specialties like primary care

Part of the solution? Cultivate mindfulness.
 

The doctors became more mindful, less burned out and less emotionally exhausted; several of the improvements persisted after the course ended. And those changes correlated with a significant increase in empathy and other attributes that contribute to patient-centered care.