Health Professional Wellbeing

Aim

An Australian field study evaluated the feasibility, acceptability and effectiveness of wellbeing seminar designed to train GPs in a set of evidence based meditation skills.

Method

The seminar was held on Saturday afternoon. Following a lecture on healthy lifestyles, they received 1.5 hrs of instruction in basic and intermediate meditation skills. GPs then had the option of doing 2 weeks of structured home practice. Professional development points were granted by the RACGP for the event. The main measures were The K10 Psychological Distress Scale (K10), a visual analogue scale (VAS), and a Diary card to assess compliance. The K10 questionnaire was completed at the beginning of the seminar at the end of the 2-week home practice period. The participants rated their subjective experience of mental silence using the VAS.

Results
299 GPs attended. 111 GPs completed the 2 week home-based and provided pre/post K10 data. At the end of the 2 week home based program, one-quarter (25.1%) of the at risk participants had improved sufficiently to shift into the low risk category. The Diary Cards showed an improvement in the achievement of mental silence by 40%.

Conclusions
The K10 baseline scores indicated higher levels of psychological distress among GPs as compared to the rest of the population. The pre/post scores showed that highly distressed GPs improved significantly. Overall, meditation has practical potential as a mental health promotion and primary prevention strategy for health professionals.

Comment

Meditation it seems is something Health Professionals are enthusiastic about. A survey of Australian GPs in 2000 found that almost 80% of respondents had recommended meditation to patients at some time in the course of their practice.

The question is should they practice what they preach? A pertinent question considering the high stress levels in the profession and their own confidence in suggesting meditation to others. A recent field study went in the direction of answering this question by evaluating the feasibility, acceptability and effectiveness of an initiative to train GPs in a set of evidence based meditation skills.

Writer Kabir Sattarshetty, Masters Student

Supervisor Dr Ramesh Manocha.

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