Mindfulness Practice in Medical Education

Abstract

Undergraduate medical education aims to prepare students to become doctors who provide quality health care. It is a rigorous and demanding endeavour that necessarily requires medical students to be attuned to themselves, their work and their surroundings, in order to succeed academically, to interact effectively and empathetically with patients, and equally importantly, to care for themselves. Mindfulness practice is an approach that helps to relieve stress, but also trains the important clinical skill of being “fully present” whether it is in class, or in clinic with a patient. We consider the evidence for mindfulness meditation, a particular aspect of mindfulness practice, in medical education and share the results of several different approaches undertaken to implement mindfulness practice in the medical curriculum at the University of Hong Kong. We discuss and reflect on the impact and outcomes of these different approaches.