Faculty Development and Continuing Professional Education
In response to an increasing number of inquiries from academic medical centers, and through meetings sponsored by the Gold Foundation, we have encountered widespread interest in these curricula. Beginning in 2010, funds from the Arnold P. Gold Foundation and the John W. Kluge Foundation allowed us to spearhead a series of workshops for clinician-educators in Mindful Practice. Held as intensive 4- and 5-day residential workshops, these have been consistently oversubscribed. The workshops provide training in Mindful Practice, and help participants incorporate mindful practice programs into their home institutions. Results of post-course surveys have indicated high satisfaction with the workshop, intention to use the approaches presented with students, intention to start programs at their home institutions and a positive impact on their attitudes towards care. Over 85% of participants awarded the workshops the highest possible ratings, and 95% indicated that they would recommend the workshops to colleagues. Our faculty organize, teach and facilitate dozens of 1/2-day, 1-day and multi-day workshops around the world each year in addition to visiting professorships and long workshops at major conferences and health systems approximately 10 times per year.
We offer:
- Programs for medical students, which include required modules during the major clinical year of medical school (most commonly the third year in US medical school). We focus on the clinical years because of the identity formation that occurs at that time. A variety of programs have been adopted by residency programs as stand-alone workshops and ongoing series, using the materials in our facilitator manual.
- 4-day residential workshops at the Chapin Mill Retreat Center in Batavia NY, near Rochester. These are designed as a retreat-like experience that provides an intensive introduction to mindful practice in a bucolic environment with comfortable facilities. Similar workshops have been offered in Hong Kong, Sweden, and Italy. These offer up to 28 hours of CME credits.
- 2-day workshops with 4 subsequent webinars. Weekend 14-hour workshops are coupled with four 90-minute webinars for a total of 20 hours that provide a similar introduction to mindful practice without the time commitment and intensity of the 4-day residential workshops. These have been offered in cities throughout the USA, some open to all health professionals and others that are restricted to a particular health system or organization. They offer up to 18 hours of CME credit.
- 1-and 2-day workshops, sometimes connected to a conference, targeted to students, medical center faculty, conference attendees, or members of a health care organization are offered many times during the year. They provide an initial introduction to mindful practice.
- 1/2-day workshops, usually at medical centers, using one of the theme-based modules, such as resilience or errors.
- Grand rounds, keynote talks at conferences, etc.
- Facilitator training workshops. Generally these are 5-day retreat-like workshops designed to prepare participants to teach mindful practice at their own institutions and elsewhere. Teaching materials are made available to attendees.