THE ART OF MEDICINE SPEAKERS’ SERIES CONTINUES – a dynamic new speakers’ series and book signing with physician authors– June 1, 2018
Dr. Ron Epstein author of “Attending” June 1st 1040-noon-
Location: Michener Institute Auditorium, 222 St Patrick St, Toronto M5T 1V4
This session is jointly sponsored by the U Toronto Departments of: Family and Community Medicine; Psychiatry, Division of Psychotherapies, Health Humanities and Education Scholarship (PHES); and the Mount Sinai Hospital (Psychiatry)
Attending:
Medicine, Mindfulness and Humanity
RONALD EPSTEIN, MD
Friday, June 1, 2018 10:40 a.m. – 12:00 noon
RONALD EPSTEIN, MD, Professor of Family Medicine, Psychiatry, Oncology and Medicine at the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry, and author of over 250 publications including, Attending: Medicine, Mindfulness and Humanity, is internationally known for his research on communication in healthcare, and writings about mindful practice and assessment in medical education.
William Osler once said, “We miss more by not seeing than by not knowing.” Not only does diagnostic accuracy depend on where and how we focus our attention. Our attentive focus affects all aspects of clinical care including diagnostic accuracy, effective communication, responding to emotional distress and reducing bias and stigmatization in health care. This talk will focus on ways in which clinicians can bring attentiveness, openness, curiosity and presence to the practice of medicine with the goal of achieving better understanding ourselves as clinicians and better shared understanding with patients. Over the past 2 decades, clinicians’ attention has been increasingly plagued by competing imperatives – arriving at a diagnosis and knowing a human being and the social context; arriving at shared understanding with patients and families and assigning a billing category; entering information into an electronic health record and being present with suffering. Balancing these competing imperatives requires self-awareness and the capacity for moment-to-moment self-monitoring during the routine and not-so-routine clinical encounters. This talk will explore how practicing mindfully, with attention and awareness, might be achieved in dynamic and often chaotic clinical environments.