What is compassion fatigue?
Can you learn how to be more compassionate with your patients? We talk to Dr. Tony Fernando, psychiatrist, sleep specialist, educator and researcher, about compassion in healthcare, happiness, mindfulness, enlightenment, buddhist monks, and a bunch of other stuff. Enjoy!
Links:
Check out the University of Auckland CALM website- Computer Assisted Learning for the Mind, a resource founded by Dr. Tony Fernando and colleagues for medical students (and everyone else) to learn about mindfulness, mental resiliency, and managing stress, anxiety, and depression.
Here’s a very interesting, informative YouTube video by Tony on the science of happiness.
And here’s a great article from Stuff.co.nz about Tony and his work in the area of compassion and compassion fatigue.
If you’re interested in training your compassion muscles here’s a link to the Stanford University Compassion Cultivation Training and the Cognitively-Based Compassion Training at Emory University.
If you’d like to leave a comment about this episode, give us feedback or suggest topics for future episodes, please click the comments link on the upper left of this page.
Another fine episode. I think that mindfulness really does help in Practice (Osteopathy). If and when compassion fatigue sets in you tend to immediately see it and deal with it, hopefully.
Hi guys, just listened to this episode. It was very good. I remember as a junior doctor being upset at my registrar calling an elderly lady a GOMER (Get out of my emergency room) – and thinking, that could be my grandmother. I often cry with patients too so perhaps I had better invest in an MRI scan!! (I don’t cry – my eyes water). In Paediatrics someone is always crying – the mother or the child. I was wondering if you or Tony know of any resources to teach children compassion? I have seen a couple of kids recently… Read more »
I don’t know of any good resources around compassion in children- I’m sure there are some. Could try contacting Tony at University of Auckland. How much better the world would be if we all learned more about compassion, for ourselves as well as others…