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Mindfulness Among Healthcare Professionals

Currently, cases of disrespect, stress, prejudgment, reduced concentration at work, poor conflict resolution skills, reduced resilience, reduced engagement in physical activities, and reduced expression of creative arts, among others, have increased significantly among various professionals. These actions have derailed the reputation of various professionals. They have also compromised the professionals’ deliverables, thus leaving their clients unsatisfied. This study, therefore, is specific to healthcare professionals. Healthcare is a very vital service in the life of humans, such that the people providing it must always be keen and sober when on duty. This argumentative essay will aim to teach healthcare professionals on the importance of mindfulness and how such knowledge can improve the quality of the delivery of healthcare services.

Shea (2016) states that “The present defines the future. The future builds on the foundation of the past” (15). Mindfulness has a history chronologically describing how it came about. The practice of mindfulness practice was employed in various religious and philosophical teachings such as Buddhism, Hinduism, and Yoga. More recently, the practice has expanded into non-religious meditation. Mindfulness was mainly popular in the religious and spiritual communities of the East. Its spread in the Western world can only be linked to particular people and secular institutions. It is important to note that some commentators argue that the history of mindfulness should not only be confined to Buddhism and Hinduism, as the practice also has origin in Islam, Judaism, and Christianity (Shea 20). Depending on people’s thoughts, many theories can be applied to explain the history of mindfulness, leading to conflicting conclusions.

The possible arguments of the theories can be traced to its origin in the field of medicine, Christianity, and Islam. Mindfulness might indeed have been much applied in the Christian, Islam, and the medicine set up. However, at the time of this research, there existed no material pieces of evidence to support that. The available materials show that mindfulness was popularly used in Buddhism and Hinduism. The modern western world later came to learn the practice of mindfulness from the traditions of Buddhists and Hindus. Therefore, this paper will focus on mindfulness from a Buddhist and Hindu perspective. In the succeeding paragraphs, we will get to know the different mental and emotional issues that healthcare professionals struggle with, the general definition of mindful practices, specific mindful practices that may help the healthcare professionals. The paper will address any opposing arguments and, finally, offer opportunities for future research.

From the resources employed to develop this paper, there is significant evidence that shows that the increase in anxiety disorders, sleep disorders, psychological disorders, and mood changes are higher in healthcare professionals than other professionals in other industries. Some factors that have been reported as the causes of mental health disorders include low levels of support from supervisors and co-workers, time pressure, heavy workload, uncertainty regarding decisions, little autonomy, and sleep deprivation due to night-shift work. Healthcare workers also suffer from burnout, which is as a result of chronic stress, a state of exhaustion combined with doubts about the value of one’s work and competence. It is directly correlated with depression. Healthcare professionals are usually exposed to conflicting situations, thus causing depression and anxiety in them. Despite such violent circumstances in their workplace, the healthcare workers must keep working in the place where such violence occurred. This reminds them of the violent events, thus experiencing anxiety associated with a potential threat.

Healthcare professionals are under pressure to face their clients with empathy instead of expressing negative emotions. Thus, there is a need for them to stamp down their antagonistic emotion aptly. This kind of work is referred to as emotional labor. Severe emotional labor is a significant job stress-or linked to mental disorders and burnout. The act of a healthcare worker engaging in complaining patients is also linked to anxiety and depression. Sleep disorders are more common in healthcare professionals than other workers, due to night-shift work, a renown cause of shift work-related disorders. Nightmares, night terrors, somnambulism, and narcolepsy are other critical sleep disorders affecting healthcare professionals.

Mindfulness generally refers to the practice of being attentive in the present moment and doing it deliberately and with mindfulness. The mindfulness meditation act relates to the intentional methods of regulating attention through the observation of thoughts, body states, and emotions. Your daily activities bring ample chances to call up mindfulness at any moment. These five daily actions can result in more mindfulness in your life. They include, firstly, mindful waking up. On waking up, sit on your bed in a relaxed posture, with your spine straight. Close your eyes and link them with the sensations of your seated body. Take about three long breaths—breath in through your nose and out via your mouth. Formulate and set your day’s goals and ensure you pursue and achieve them.

The second mindful action is Mindful eating. Breathe before eating. Listen to your body by bringing your attention to the physical sense experience in your belly. Eat per your hunger by being mindful of what you eat, how much you eat, and when to eat. Eat peacefully. If you don't love it, don't eat it. Thirdly, practice the mindful pause, rewire your brain—trip over what you want to do, whether to do some yoga, or to meditate. Refresh your triggers regularly and create new patterns. Fourthly, have a mindful workout by activating your mind and muscles. Be clear about your aims, a warm-up for at least five minutes, and try some simple moves like jumping jacks. By moving consistently, your brain activity, nervous system, and heart rate begin to align and stabilize. Settle on a speed, challenge yourself by increasing the speed, cool down, and finally, have rest. Finally, have a mindful drive by driving yourself calmly and not crazy.

Other general mindfulness practices include mindful non-judgmental awareness f breadth, body, feelings, thoughts, and emotions, mindful walking meditation, mindful eating, mindful body scan in a sitting or lying position, listening with non-judgment. Mindfulness results in reduced stress and improved ability to manage stress increased focus; the improved ability to pay attention, concentrate and focus, improved emotion regulation and reduced impulsiveness, increased emotional intelligence and conflict resolution skills, increased empathy, respect, and understanding of others, increased capacity to overcome challenges and intelligence, increased engagement in physical activity, improved creativity and collaboration.

The potential benefits of concatenating mindfulness into the lives of health care professionals are multidimensional and far-reaching. There are three pathways to this concatenation. First, for helping professionals, self-care is obligatory for providing efficient care. Mindfulness education has been shown to cut down anxiety, depression, stress and rumination, and to better-compassion and positive mood states in health care professionals. Second, the practice of mindfulness improves qualities that are captious to effective treatment, such as attention, emotion regulation, empathy, and affect endurance. Practicing mindfulness appears to help clinicians be more present and effective during sessions. Third, experience with the practice of mindfulness is essential for professionals wishing to provide mindfulness-based treatments.

Health care professionals are driven to work with the purpose that they should be caring for others, yet often the view of caring for themselves as selfish in some way. If they do not involve in self-care and are consistently working themselves to the limit, perhaps suffering from burnout, it is unlikely that they will have ample energy to help others in the ways they would like. There is accelerating cognizance that productivity, creativity, and extended high enthusiasm are not the result of prolonged engagement with stressful mental frameworks. Instead, they require a more balanced, protective conceptualization to the social control of personal energy and one’s responses to the environment and situations that arise.

It has been exhibited that persons and groups can be taught to process their effect to stressful conditions in productive ways that aid resilience, well-being, and long-term health. That is why health care organizations such as IHI are, to a great extent, centralized on restoring satisfaction and joy to health care it is not adequate to depend on clinical skills and the want to do great to face the mounting challenges of delivering safe, quality care in a frantic workplace. We need a workforce that is armored with training to be more present-minded, resilient, and compassionate toward patients and themselves.

“For more than 20 years, in my former role as part of the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency’s emergency response team, I have worked on several natural and man-made disasters,” Ali provides a fact about himself.

Ali in The Progressive Magazine, provides the statistics of the American Emergency Service according to the American Security Foundation. “American Security Foundation estimates that America has 891,000 emergencies medical service (EMS) professionals, including 600,000 EMT s and 142,000 paramedics.” Ali also offers the data of the firefighters according to the National Fire Department Registry, “there are approximately 1.065,200 firefighters serving in 27,195 fire departments nationwide, and responding to emergencies from 51,382 fire stations.” He then outlines some of the emotional issues that healthcare professionals go through (“Protect Our First Responders”).

This study has a few limitations, hence giving room for future research. First, as a crosswise study, reasoning regarding the effects of unmindful practices is limited, and several prejudices could have affected the results. Healthcare professionals troubled by a mental disorder may have quit their jobs since they need to utilize emotional intelligence to perform their duties. However, we cannot evaluate the size of this healthy worker effect mathematically. Generally, workers in healthcare facilities have high knowledge of health and physical convenience for medical services. In psychiatric disorders, despite higher convenience, such knowledge can make them more reactive to the risk of ‘stigmatization’ by their workmates or supervisors. The prejudice caused by variation in accessibility could be substantiated via comparing results with control-diseases such as thyroid disease and rheumatic disease. Still, it could not be confirmed could not confirm it.

Second, the healthcare sector includes several occupations such as nurses, laboratory technicians, facility maintenance workers, and medical doctors. There could be variations in occupational stress factors and approximated preponderance of mental disorders among these workers. Third, most people in the broad population wonder about possible demerits in the workplace caused by psychiatric diagnoses, which, then, leads to some patients electing not to apply for national health insurance for treatment to avoid a report of such treatment being into the public record.

Conclusion

Healthcare professionals need to understand the importance of mindfulness and how such knowledge can improve the quality of the delivery of healthcare services. From the above arguments, it is evident that the increase in anxiety disorders, sleep disorders, mood disorders, and various psychiatric disorders among professionals in the healthcare industry is a worrying trend. As healthcare workers strive towards employing mindfulness in their work, it is also essential for patients and the management of healthcare organizations to ensure that they are also mindful of the well-being of healthcare workers.

Works Cited

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Braun, Sarah Ellen, Patricia Anne Kinser, and Bruce Rybarczyk;Can mindfulness in health care professionals improve patient care? An integrative review and proposed model." Translational behavioral medicine 9.2 (2019): 187-201.

Calabrese, Leonard H. “Why Mindfulness/Meditation Is a ‘No-Brainer’ for Health-Care Professionals.” Journal of Patient Experience, vol. 6, no. 1, Mar. 2019, pp. 21–23, doi:10.1177/2374373518774390.

Johnson, Sarah. “How Can Health and Care Professionals Use Mindfulness?” The Guardian, 20 Sept. 2017, www.theguardian.com/healthcare-network/2016/jun/07/health-social-care-professionals-use-mindfulness.

Raab, Kelley. "Mindfulness, self-compassion, and empathy among health care professionals: a review of the literature." Journal of health care chaplaincy 20.3 (2014): 95-108.

Shapiro, S., et al. "Chapter 14 - Mindfulness for Health Care Professionals and Therapists in Training." Mindfulness-Based Treatment Approaches (Second Edition), 2nd ed., Elsevier Inc., 2014, pp. 319-345.

Shea, Christopher. " A brief history of mindfulness in the USA and its impact on our lives." Psych Central 27 (2016).