Enhanced Stress Resilience Training for Residents

ESRT involves six weekly 90-minute group classes and one 2 - 4 hour retreat. Classes focus on developing mindfulness skills (i.e. sustained attention, open monitoring, emotional regulation, meta-cognition) in the context of skills and concepts for managing stress, particularly in practicing medicine. Homework consists of 20 minutes per day of mindfulness exercises following guided meditation CDs or videos of movement-based practice, and practice will be reported periodically by text. A 3-hour outdoor retreat occurs at week six. The central exercises of ESRT are the body scan, sitting meditation, chi gong and yoga. For both arms, the weekly teaching sessions occur on a workday morning during protected time at Parnassus, Mission Bay or Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital campus.

Control group participants will meet for 6 weeks, 90 minutes each week, for classes focuses on stress management through rest and exercise, with equivalent protected time and small group bonding but without the use of contemplative practices. Topics will include the history of surgery, patient perspective, the physician personality, technical mastery, fallibility and limits, balancing compassion and detachment and knowing when not to operate. For daily practice, control participants will be asked to devote 20 min per day to stress management through rest and exercise again reported daily by text.