Files
Abstract
Workers in health professions like healthcare often experience the industry-specific stressors of burnout and compassion fatigue. Research shows burnout and compassion fatigue interfere with the rewarding experience felt by acts of caregiving and can lead to reduced worker well-being, compromised care, and worker resignation. Research also shows that health professions workers who engage in the self-care practices of mindfulness and self-compassion experience less burnout, greater compassion for self and others, and a heightened sense of inner alignment for wisdom, purposeful meaning-making, and overall well-being. This action research study explored student self-care in the context of undergraduate preparedness in health professions education and investigated the transformative potential of mindfulness training to build student self-care capacity. The overarching research question that guided the efforts of this dissertation was: What is learned at the individual, group, and system levels that advance the theory and practice of transformation in the context of undergraduate preparedness for student self-care in health professions education? Findings from this study provide insight into potential new directions for student preparedness in health professions education. Organizational integration of professionally-led mindfulness training may be effective for student self-care capacity building that sustainably addresses the 21st-century industry-specific challenges of burnout and compassion fatigue. Additionally, this paper discusses the synthesis of intentional practices from action research, appreciative inquiry, and adaptive leadership for human-centered organizational change.