Special Session 6 - Resilience in Organisation

Resilience course in medical education is not about teaching one to be resilient. It is about building an open and adaptive platform to work with students on the continuing call for personal growth and resilience building as part of a holistic university education for future doctors. Medical knowledge on human diseases is ever expanding at sky-rocketing speed but little is even done to pay the smallest attention to our own state of mind, our feelings under stress, our philosophies and value clash as to who we are as we strive to attain our ideal professional self in the medical training. Short of such self-compassion and awareness runs the risk of physician burnout and even jeopardized mental health. Inspired by the many sharing of our alumni and students who have open up to our team in their personal growth and struggles, and the many outstanding education programmes before us that yield good evidence of effects, since 2017 CU Medicine has started to re-engineer a small corner in a busy MBChB curriculum into a small platform that engages junior students in three consecutive years through a series of experiential learning. The curricular component is aligned to the universal basis of an existing caring community built on 3-tiered model, where the top of the pyramid provides individual counseling support and indicated health care for the high stress situations and the middle tier caters for gate-keeper training and peer support. To the Wellness Team, the resilience course completes a big missing piece of the student wellness programme, and it is only the beginning of a lifelong journey.

Background: Burnout poses great challenge to the healthcare workers’ well-being and healthcare system’s quality and safety globally. A mindfulness-based intervention, Mindful Practice (MP), has been demonstrated to alleviate burnout of physicians in the United States and Spain.
Objectives: Since there was a lack of protocol-driven evidence-based program to address burnout of hospital staff in Hong Kong (HK), the aim of this study was to (1) examine the acceptability and feasibility of developing a localized MP intervention to alleviate staff's burnout and (2) examine the effectiveness of the localized MP using randomized controlled trial (RCT) to reduce staff’s burnout and perceived stress.
Method: Ten staff with previous mindfulness-based intervention experiences were invited to attend a 5-day MP workshop. They provided qualitative comments about the feasibility of the program. Their level of burnout, mood disturbance and mindfulness were measured at the pre-intervention, post-intervention and 9-month follow-up. In addition, 93 staff who reported having burnout or perceived stress were recruited in the RCT to evaluate the localized program’s effectiveness. Their burnout and perceived stress were collected at baseline, post-intervention and 3-month follow-up. Program evaluation was also gathered.
Results: Findings of the feasibility study revealed that most participants agreed that MP was practical and acceptable for HK's hospital workforce. Participants also reported of having significant reduction in burnout after intervention and 9-month follow up. For the RCT study, participants of treatment group reported having statistically significant reduction in burnout (emotion exhaustion and depersonalization) and perceived stress after intervention and at 3-month follow up. Majority of the participants were satisfied with the program.
Conclusions: MP may be a promising option in reducing burnout of the healthcare workers in HK.