Looking inside ourselves: a culture of kindness

Abstract

Looking inside ourselves—being present and attentive to our own and others’ words and feelings—helps us communicate and interact with a mindful, open heart. Mindfulness and patient-centeredness help caregivers provide higher quality care. Historical background on a predecessor of mindfulness—the biopsychosocial model of health and disease, developed at the University of Rochester—provides context for the mindfulness “movement” in health care. A culture of mindfulness, supported by mindfulness and meditation training for physicians and other health care providers, helps practitioners show greater compassion, kindness, and humanity, all qualities that patients need and deserve. In the health care world, many organizations have been created that focus on aspects of mindfulness. Some have a more clinical emphasis and others focus on behavioral or neuroscience research as it relates to meditation, mindfulness, compassion, and kindness. Mindfulness is also being taught in business schools and corporations. Leaders who approach their teams with respect, integrity, honesty, and kindness are more effective leaders. Organizations like Google, Nike, and Aetna, among others, use the concept of mindfulness, as well as emotional and social intelligence, to build interpersonal competencies and create more people-centered workplaces. As medical libraries live in the health care environment and medical library leaders are key to libraries’ present and future, there are strong reasons to address the concepts of mindfulness and kindness and put them to work in the medical library workplaces. A mindfulness meditation exercise closes the lecture, sending the attendees out into their day with calm and open minds and hearts.

Vulnerability and physical well-being of caregivers: what relationship?

“…This should be considered in order to prevent the negative outcomes (41) of pathological maladjustment due to the exposition to extreme states (34). As a strategy there are some studies that suggest paying more attention to introspection, empathy (42,43) and consideration of inner dynamics and the positive outcomes of a higher self-compassion (44).…”

“…So suffering shows a causal and positive relationship with the depressive state and clearly an inverse polarity with adaptive mood. Training based on mindfulness, meditation and introspective practices for health workers provides higher levels of compassion, kindness and humanity as qualities desired and deserved by patients (42).…”

The activist health sciences librarian

“…Today’s lecture comes on the heels of the outstanding 2016 lecture, “We Can Be Heroes: MLA’s Leadership Journey,” by M.J. Tooey, AHIP, FMLA, with its reference to my personal hero, David Bowie [1]. In 2017, we were riveted by the inspiring lecture, “Looking Inside Ourselves; A Culture of Kindness,” by Julia Sollenberger, AHIP, FMLA, which spoke directly to my spiritual heart [2]. Last year, Martin gave a brilliant presentation on “Social Justice and the Medical Librarian” [3].…”

“…For the time we have together, I hope you will consider the backdrop of images not as a distraction from the words, but rather to give weight to what it means to be fully present. For that presence, as Sollenberger reminded us, is a tool for expressing our values of compassion and kindness, which underlie the mission-based work that we perform [6]. Being present is an essential part of the context that lets us do our very best work and is, therefore, a useful tool.…”