This morning during our safety moment, Dave Mayer said Mindfulness requires action. Mindfulness has become quite a buzz word in medical education to prevent burnout. Being a type A person who finds mindfulness practices frustrating and anxiety-inducing, adding action to mindfulness makes sense to me.

It isn’t enough to be mindful of the interactions that trigger frustration for me, I should act to resolve such interactions so they are less frequent. It isn’t enough to be mindful of trash on the floor of the hallway as I pass it, I should be more proactive in keeping a place of healing, like a hospital, clean. For me, adding action to mindfulness puts the concept into a version that I can fully embrace.

In one of my small groups yesterday, we talked about how hard doing a good informed consent really is. If you have to consent someone of low medical literacy of a few different things at the same time, do you ever walking away feeling that they truly understood all the benefits but also the risks and potential adverse outcomes? Do they really understand the likelihood of getting an infection after a central line is placed, or do they think we just have to say these things?

We have trained years and years to fully understand the procedures and potential outcomes. Yet we expect someone with potentially no medical background, or worse, previous misinformation about the healthcare system to understand the differences and dangers of intubating, central lines, chest tubes, ventilators, and antibiotics in one ICU informed consent. I have a hard time believing, anyone would not be saturated within the… Continue reading →