A Professional Development Workshop to Facilitate Self-Forgiveness

Abstract

Background Evidence suggests that forgiving one's self, others, and events improves relationships and self-esteem; reduces anxiety, depression, and stress; lowers blood pressure; improves cardiovascular health; and boosts immune function. Objective We determined the efficacy of a workshop to facilitate forgiveness in medical education professionals. Methods A 1-hour self-forgiveness workshop conducted by 4 facilitators was presented at a medical education conference in 2018. The workshop included a didactic presentation on forgiveness and Internal Family Systems, small group discussion on self-forgiveness concepts, a 15-minute guided imagery audio meditation on self-forgiveness, and postintervention small group discussion. The 18-item Heartland Forgiveness Scale (HFS), which measures forgiveness for self, others, and situations, was completed preintervention and postintervention (score range, 18–126). Results There were 91 participants, including graduate medical education managers and directors (61%), deans/clerkship directors (19%), and academic faculty/others (20%). Participants were from the South (20%), West (17%), Midwest (31%), and Northeast (32%) US regions. Baseline HFS scores showed that 53% were forgiving, 47% were neutral, and no participants had unforgiving tendencies. Total HFS score significantly increased (90.31 pre versus 95.7 post, P = .013), with significant increases in forgiveness of self (53% pre versus 73% post; P = .012; odds ratio = 2.47) and forgiveness of others (49% pre versus 69% post; P = .020; odds ratio = 2.3). Preintervention group discussion topics focused on guilt, shame, and barriers to forgiving, while postintervention discussions centered on challenges and benefits. Conclusions A brief guided meditation intervention with focused discussions was feasible and improved the immediate tendency to forgive.

Psychological interventions to promote self-forgiveness: a systematic review

“…The study by Eaton and Ferrari [45] enhanced dispositional self-forgiveness, state self-forgiveness, and parasympathetic responses. At the same time, the other study enhanced self-forgiveness, the forgiveness of others, and the situational forgiveness of medical education professionals [53].…”

“…The result reveals the use of an Internal Family System (IFS) based guided imagery intervention in two of the studies [45,53]. The guided imagery session comprised seven epochs, each lasting around five minutes and designed to evoke specific emotional states.…”

“…As mentioned above, the risk of bias was assessed using the JBI critical appraisal tool. Fourteen studies were randomized controlled trials [15,29,, five were quasiexperimental [45,48,53,54,58], and two were qualitative…”

“…The guided meditation is implemented in university students [45] and medical education professionals [53]. The study by Eaton and Ferrari [45] enhanced dispositional self-forgiveness, state self-forgiveness, and parasympathetic responses.…”

Influence on Forgiveness, Character Strengths and Satisfaction with Life of a Short Mindfulness Intervention via a Spanish Smartphone Application

“…Regarding forgiveness, evidence suggests that forgiving oneself, forgiving others and negative events that are beyond a person’s control improves social relationships, self-esteem, cardiovascular health and immune function, and reduces anxiety, depression, stress and blood pressure [ 67 ]. Our MBI was able to improve overall forgiveness levels and those related to self-forgiveness, which were significantly higher in the EG than in the CG.…”