How Meditation Can Reduce Your Stress & Prevent Burnout - how to recover from burnout

Transcript

welcome to the program I'm your host Neil Howard here on health professional radio glad that you could join us for another segment got to have a conversation this morning with dr. girón Timur purim and he's going to talk about burnout professional burnout especially amongst physicians welcome to the program dr. Jayram hi thank you for having me glad that you could join us to give us a bit of background about yourself I practiced internal medicine and I've graduated in the year 2012 and have been an academic internal medicine hospital so I work with resident physicians at wellSpan York Hospital and I teach them I see patients and I take care of the residents education and health issues of our patients you would think that physicians in the business of helping people when it comes to burnout it would seem that that would be extremely dangerous for the population you know you're absolutely right unfortunately the medical profession especially the physician population we're at a very high risk of burnout there is a lot of data showing that at any given point between 44 to 50 percent of physicians experiences burnout and it is grown to such an extreme that there is something that needs to be done about it but it has to burn out it's a combination of emotional exhaustion and sometimes developing a sense of callousness towards people we call it depersonalization and it can also affect the way we feel about our work a sense a feeling of lack of personal accomplishment these are the three components that we talk about when we discuss burnout and it's surprising to see that a lot of physicians have these so if I'm understanding correctly there seems to be two types the callousness the depersonalization of the patient and the I guess empathy or stress of the patient's personal situation that you're trying to help is that the two sides of the spectrum that cause this burnout yes I think they all go hand in hand it starts off with mostly emotional exhaustion and it goes on to certain extent that one starts to develop this feeling of depersonalization and offense of callousness sets in and it focuses usually to a feeling that we are not performing well and when one is burned out it almost feels as if there is a little strand holding us together ready to snap almost a feeling that we are at the end of our rope it's not a great feeling to have when you're a physician and you're dealing with people on a very personal level and you connect with them you connect with their families you connect sometimes with their caregivers is this burnout something that always leads to a person saying you know what I don't want to be I don't want to do this anymore or are there things to kind of bring you back from this level of anxiety or emotional exhaustion the burnout has several implications including a high turnover at the workplace physicians who experience burnout too are at a higher risk of leaving their jobs and it's unfortunately also affects the patient care decreasing the quality of patient care it can also decrease the satisfaction of the patients and it can increase the complication rates for the patients as well with regards to improving the situation there have been many studies showing that organizational factors play a significant role in improving burnout but also personal factors play a role and improving personal resilience improving one's own inner emotional State and help us get through burnout in a much better way get through the day in a much better way get through the ups and downs that the day offers in a much better way and for me personally I have been a proponent of the practice of heartfulness meditation which has personally helped me and we have also conducted some studies in our Hospital to see if it would help with burnout and we have seen a pretty good result in physicians nurses and House staff physicians as well now I have heard of mindful meditation what is heartful meditation so heartfulness meditation is a very simple heart based meditation practice that is aimed at achieving a state of inner balance and the hassanis meditation has a few sets of practices a guided relaxation practice followed by meditation and in this meditation one very gently rest their attention on something good within themselves the best of themselves let us call it a source of light within oneself and one as one starts to rest their attention on the source of light within the heart slowly one begins to experience the change of inner landscape and when I speak with our residents I tell them that when we close our eyes it almost feels as if we are doing nothing but we are doing something very important perhaps the most important thing we are putting up with ourselves and then we realize that it is not so easy to put up with our own selves and if it is very difficult to put up with our own selves how do we expect others to put up with us but as we very gently rest our attention on the best within ourselves on the source of light within our hearts when the inner landscape starts to change slowly we become a little comfortable with our own selves and when we become comfortable with ourselves it becomes possible for us to become comfortable with others and for others to be comfortable with us a sense of harmony and building up of relationships can happen good this practice another important aspect of this practice of thoughtfulness is trying to see if we can get through the day in a much better way with the ups and downs it offers and see if we can get those stresses and strains out of the system at the end of the day when we work at a professional level there are so many stresses and strains that we go through on a day to day basis and when for me when I take those stresses and strains with me and go home and interact with my friends family members my kids unfortunately sometimes those constraints are unleashed on them and what I do is I tell my wife my kids give me 10 or 15 minutes let me come back in a better state of mind so I go to my room the mancave my dungeon whatever you want to call it I sit down close my eyes and make a suggestion that all the complexities and impurities the stresses and strains that I'm carrying within their vaporizing in the form of smoke from the back top down to the tailbone the shoulder blades the entire back and I sit with this idea for about 15 minutes or so at the end of which I feel a bit lighter and when I feel lighter I make this suggestion that this lightness is actually filling me up from my heart and filling my each and every cell of my being almost rooting out through each and every cell of my being and when I interact with my friends family members in this state it's usually much better interaction all these plays are all in our burn out the way we handle things and it can even offer a good night's sleep at night where can our listeners get some more information about heartfulness meditation and about professional burnout so on the Hudson Institute website it is www.fredbeanstoyota.com it's a very beautifully designed website which has links to the professional medical and educational sites and on the website on the medical side there are some nice articles on burnout that one can access it also has some of the study that we published here and it would be a good read well I thank you for here on health professional radio dr. Javon it's been a pleasure thank you so much for having me you've been listening to health professional radio I'm your host Neil Howard transcripts and audio of this program are available at HP RFM and health professional radio comm a you you can also to the podcast on itunes listen and download its soundcloud and be sure to to our youtube channel at youtube.com health professional radio