Increasing Compassion in Medical Decision-Making: Can a Brief Mindfulness Intervention Help?

What is it about?

Testing the notion that mindfulness training might help sustain or increase compassion in medicine. The study shows that, at least when you briefly induce mindfulness, the effects on compassion are complicated. Ratings of compassion increased among less self-compassionate persons while prosocial behavior increased among more self-compassionate persons.

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Why is it important?

Compassion and the loss of compassion are major challenges in modern medicine. Identifying whether interventions like mindfulness might be useful is important both in terms of training doctors as well as in giving them tools for professional development.