Paying attention to attention: a program evaluation of faculty-delivered mindfulness-based attention training to optimize wellness and professionalism in medical students

Abstract

Background: As physician distress rises, medical schools must provide programs to counter such distress at the earliest stages of training. Mindfulness training (MT) is one intervention that can alleviate stress during medical school. However, framing MT around wellness alone misses the opportunity to connect core cognitive and psychological capacities strengthened by MT to professional goals and skill acquisition inherent to successful medical training. Here, we highlight how the attentional components of MT align with students’ goals of becoming attending physicians while promoting academic, psychological, and interpersonal flourishing. MT courses that focus on strengthening attentional capacities can intuitively link academic and professional development with wellness, appealing to a wide array of students. Methods: We iteratively recontextualized an existing short-form mindfulness training program for high-stress pre-professionals, known as Mindfulness Based Attention Training (MBAT), to the medical school context (MBAT-Rx). MBAT-Rx was offered by physician trainers to first-year medical students at Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University as a tool for improving study habits and focus in addition to the development of both self-care and patient care strategies. MBAT-Rx consists of weekly, two-hour sessions over four weeks, with 10–15 min of daily mindfulness practice between sessions. At the end of the four weeks, students submitted voluntary program evaluation responses detailing their experience of the program. Results: Optional program evaluation responses (n = 67) highlight that students found the program to be useful for their academic success and ability to pay attention, their interpersonal relationships, and their psychological health. By framing MT as an opportunity to boost core attentional capacities and connecting this to professional and academic goals in addition to wellness, MBAT-Rx appealed to a wide variety of students. Conclusions: Our ongoing work suggests that framing MT as both a professional development and wellness promotion tool, taught by physicians themselves, and structured around students’ time demands, may be a successful model for medical schools looking to increase the impact of their mindfulness offerings. Such programs are needed to equip medical students to navigate the demands of a challenging healthcare training landscape.