23: How Meditation & Mindfulness Can Make You a Better Physician with Dr. Antonia Stephen

DocWorking: The Whole Physician Podcast

"I think there are many people who are high achievers who come to a point in their lives where maybe they’ve lost some of that mindfulness and I think a lot of what we do to get to that place challenges our ability to stay mindful. You know, having to multitask all day, being sleep deprived, feeling tired, working very very hard for many many years, we know that that can deplete the ability to be cognitively focused and this is something you can actually do about that.”- Antonia Stephen MD, Massachusetts General Hospital

Are you feeling stressed? Struggling to stay focused? Tune in this week as we dive into all things dealing with meditation and mindfulness with Dr. Antonia Stephen MD.

Dr. Stephen is a surgeon and Surgical Director of Wellness at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital. In this episode, Jill sits down with Dr. Stephen to discuss how meditation and mindfulness can make you a better physician.

Dr. Antonia Stephen received her medical degree from Harvard Medical School, completed her general surgery residency at Massachusetts General Hospital, and her surgical fellowship at the Cleveland Clinic, before joining the surgical staff at Massachusetts General Hospital in the Division of Surgical Oncology, where she specializes in surgery of the thyroid, parathyroid and adrenal glands.

Excerpts from the show:

“I’ve come around to meditation and mindfulness and it’s something that really helps me in every single aspect of my life. Additionally, it also helps me pivot between all the different things in my life which include, obviously, my work at the hospital, in the operating, out of the operating room, in academics, teaching residents and medical students and at home and even in things like my own athletic pursuits. So there are many different applications of mindfulness focusing on the life of a physician and specifically the life of a surgeon. Having this practice of meditation and mindfulness in your life, which we do often practice when we have a quiet moment alone in our home or in our office, actually makes us better able to keep that relaxed focused which is where you really want to be in your life when you’re trying to accomplish anything. You’re able to bring that relaxed focus to every aspect of your work. So that’s sort of where I came around to doing this and why I think it’s so important for really anyone with a busy life and certainly for academic physicians.”- Antonia Stephen MD

“I don’t think there is a single person out there, no matter what you’re doing, that couldn’t benefit from feeling more focused and feeling more relaxed when they’re doing things. It’s sort of the sweet spot that we all want to get to. We sometimes talk about it as the flow state and in whatever you’re doing in your life, being in that focused state of mind is no doubt of great benefit to whatever you’re trying to accomplish. Whether you are trying to accomplish a difficult surgery, whether you’re trying to run a meeting or have a conversation with a colleague or whether you’re confronting your angry teenager, being focused and present and relaxed is the absolute best way you can be.”- Antonia Stephen MD

“Physicians and in particular surgeons, have also studied the techniques of mindfulness and meditation and how it impacts not just your sense of well-being, not just your stress levels but also your ability to stay focused and perform. There are two places that have studied this closely in residents. One is at University of Indiana, the other is UCSF where they have a center for mindfulness and surgery. What was particularly interesting about the data from the University of Indiana is that they actually looked very closely at technical performance in the skills lab and in particular, in laparoscopic skills. Laparoscopic skills can be a very difficult and frustrating thing to learn how to do. They compared medical students and residents who were attempting to learn these very difficult skills and studied ones that were trained in mindfulness and ones that weren’t and did see differences in their ability to focus throughout these challenging exercises.”- Antonia Stephen MD

Book mentioned in the show:

The Knowing-Doing Gap: How Smart Companies Turn Knowledge into Action by Jeffrey Pfeffer & Robert I. Sutton https://amzn.to/2R9l5fK

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