When a healthcare provider burns out, it’s not just their personal well-being that suffers. It can detrimentally impact patient care and the wider healthcare system too.
With the causes of burnout just as multifaceted and interconnected as the effects, finding solutions for this ever-increasing issue is a complex task. But a multidisciplinary team co-led by Dr. Jane Gair, a Teaching Professor at the UBC Island Medical Program, is getting ready to explore one potential therapy: a mindfulness community of practice.
Photo provided by Dr. Mark Sherman
The idea to study this came from the project’s other co-lead, Dr. Mark Sherman. The Victoria-based physician, who founded the BC Association of Living Mindfully (BCalm) program, regularly hosts mindfulness retreats for physicians. At these retreats, attendees are encouraged to build communities of practice that keep them in touch with each other for support and meditation after going home.
While previous studies have shown that mindfulness can decrease burnout and increase resilience, there isn’t a lot of research on physicians at retreats or on a post-retreat community of practice explains Gair.
“We want to find out what happens when you create a community of people that care about someone’s wellness.”
Dr. Jane Gair
To support their work planning a research program, the team received a 2024 Convening and Collaborating Award from Michael Smith Health Research BC. Gair says they are using the 18-month grant to “think about, create, and design the best possible research question and project that we can.” Dedicated to embodying the spirit of the grant, the team is also committed to collaborating with external partners. A recent addition is project manager Mitch Renaud, who brings his practice as a meditator with more than 10 years of experience leading various projects and grants in the arts. They are also currently working with individuals at Island Health and the BC SUPPORT Unit to design an engagement session that will give Vancouver Island-based physicians, nurses, and allied health professionals the opportunity to co-develop the research program.
“There are many benefits of engaging people with lived experience in the development of research projects,” says Hiro Ito, Patient and Public Research Engagement Lead at the BC SUPPORT Unit Island Centre.
“One of the core reasons is to ensure that the research is meaningful and relevant to the people it impacts the most. Without the voices of people with lived experience, there may be many challenges or strengths that are overlooked by the research team,” she says. “Engaging people with lived experience early in the research process can also ensure that the study design is appropriate and most effective in answering key research questions.”
The engagement session will also be a learning opportunity for the team’s medical student members. The students—who include Anthony Preston, Chanel Mandap, Leah McFarelane, and Nathan Johal (all IMP Class of 2027)—will facilitate small group conversations on specific elements of the research program. “We wanted to use part of this grant to provide medical students with training and skills in research,” says Gair.
Photo provided by Dr. Mark Sherman
While the team is excited to understand how mindfulness retreats and communities of practice could mitigate burnout in healthcare professionals, Gair is aware that these may not be the best solutions for everyone. “I feel like the term ‘mindfulness’ is overused and some people are tired of it. There are also spiritual connotations that some people don’t want to interact with,” she explains.
She also doesn’t want to give the impression that it’s up to the individual to solve the issue of healthcare-based burnout. “A lot of this is put on the individual. ‘If you were just more resilient, if you just went to this workshop, if you just did this, if you just did that, then you would be better.’ It isn’t fair. People start to push back and say, ‘But I’m not the problem,’” Gair says. “It’s the expectations of the system that are the problem.”
“We want to demonstrate that there is a problem, and that there may be ways that we could support people through it,” she says. “If there are ways to intervene and help reduce burnout, maybe the healthcare system could be a little more resilient too.”
Photo provided by Dr. Mark Sherman