UVA School of Medicine

A Brief History of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction at UVa

Two Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) courses started at UVa this week.  In our introduction to the class we are teaching for healthcare providers, Matt Goodman and I briefly reflected on the history of the Mindfulness Center, with which we have been affiliated for 23 and 18 years respectively.  This led me to want to expand on this a bit more. MBSR courses remain the core offerings of the Mindfulness Center as they have for the past 24 years, since the Mindfulness Center was established by Maria Tussi Kluge and Allie Rudolph as one of the first such centers in an academic institution in the country.  MBSR was developed by Jon Kabat-Zinn and first taught in the University of Massachusetts Stress Management Clinic in 1979.  The benefits for patients quickly became apparent, and led to several formal research studies. 
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UVa Basketball: Lessons from Dealing with Adversity

By John Schorling Last year, I wrote a Monthly Musing about the UVa men’s basketball team and the disappointment they and many others felt as a result of their loss in the first round of the 2018 NCAA tournament.  I did end it by saying that this year “might even end with UVa finally winning a national championship”.  Things are very different now as the team has gone from the first number 1 seed to ever lose to a number 16 seed to winning the tournament and yes, becoming national champions.  This is considered by many to be one of the most remarkable turn-arounds in sports history.  Yet it didn’t just happen.  A big part of what made it possible were the choices the coaches and the players made in how they dealt with this historic loss.  Their story has become an inspiring lesson in how it is possible to grow through adversity.
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Mindfulness for Healthcare Providers Fosters Professional Quality of Life and Mindful Attention Among Emergency Medical Technicians

This study, which was a collaboration between the UVa Mindfulness Center, the Charlottesville Albemarle Rescue Squad and the UVa Departments of Surgery and Psychiatry, investigated whether a   Mindfulness for Healthcare Providers (MHP) course can reduce distress and promote wellbeing among emergency medical services (EMS) providers.  The MHP course is a modified version of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction taught in eight 2.5 hour weekly sessions with an all day retreat.  A total of 15 EMS providers enrolled in the course and 11 completed it.  After the course, EMS providers endorsed statistically significant increases in compassion satisfaction, trait mindfulness, and decreases in burnout compared to the beginning of the program.
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