UK’s 1st Ever Mindfulness in Medicine Conference

Speakers at the conference include Vice-Chancellor Sir Anthony Seldon, who was the Master of Wellington College when it became the first school to introduce mindfulness and well-being lessons. He also co-founded Action for Happiness.

Jamie Bristow, Director of the Mindfulness Initiative, and involved with the All-Party Parliamentary Mindfulness Group, will be speaking. Dr Craig Hassed, Senior Lecturer, Monash University, Australia, who wrote Mindful Medical Practitioners, will be delivering the keynote address entitled: How Mindfulness is Transforming Medicine Through Medical Education. Dr Craig Hassed will also lead practical workshops at the event. Topics include teaching mindfulness, debriefing and mindful inquiry contextualising mindfulness in the curriculum, making it relevant and engaging students in mindfulness.

Other speakers are: Professor Sarah Stewart-Brown, Professor of Public Health, University of Warwick Medical School; Dr Alice Malpass, NIHR Research Fellow, University of Bristol; Dr Paul Bernard, Consultant Psychiatrist, Teacher/Trainer, University of Oxford Mindfulness Centre; Dr Jonty Heaversedge, chair of NHS Southwark Clinical Commissioning and Ruth Sugden, King’s College, London.

Conference Organiser Dr Jasmine Hearn said: “We have some fantastic speakers. Dr Craig Hassad is from a medical school which has integrated mindfulness throughout its whole curriculum. Rather than offering students optional drop-in sessions, mindfulness is part of their core curriculum and all the students do it.

“The purpose of the conference is to share knowledge and connect with other likeminded individuals, and to show how we can teach mindfulness to medical students and how they can use it throughout their undergraduate degree and in their careers.”

University of Buckingham Vice-Chancellor, Sir Anthony Seldon, said: “This conference will be of interest to a huge number of people. The NHS badly needs more staff of all kinds who can focus calmly and professionally on their patients and their needs. They need to be self-possessed and unstressed. Yet every year that medicals students remain studying, their mental health declines. Practising Mindfulness will enhance the relationship between medic and patient, will improve medics’ mental health, and result in a vast improvement in the whole atmosphere in which medicine is practised.”