Meditation and Medical Ethics

Medical ethics and mindfulness have a lot in common. I reached that conclusion after a recent conversation with my long-time friend Charlie Halpern about his effort to introduce mindfulness into legal education.

Charlie has been doing this at the UC Berkeley School of Law for the past several years through classes and elective retreats. He's an enthusiast and a believer. He feels, and many legal educators and law schools agree with him, that mindfulness practice increases empathy, compassion, and the ability to really hear what clients and others involved in negotiation and litigation are saying. He described how a professor at Berkely has taken to starting his classes with three minutes of silence. The professor reports that "sacrificing" three minutes of class time leads to a richer, more thoughtful class experience.

I've taught meditation to patients in a medical setting and have recommended meditation to many of my patients over the years. And I've written in this blog about how mindfulness practice can be woven into busy practitioners' lives. (See here and here.) But until the conversation I had with Charlie, I hadn't recognized the obvious connection between mindfulness and the way I've taught medical ethics.

In the semester-long course medical ethics course that I taught at Harvard Medical School, in addition to the topics that formed the intellectual content of the course, I encouraged the students to hone their skill at (a) observing their cognitive and emotional reactions to clinical situations that raise ethical issues, (b) treating these reactions as "data," not "truths," and then (c) reflecting on the "data" presented by their experience as one piece of ethical analysis before (d) reaching a conclusion. Over time, as demonstrated by clinicians who we regard as models of ethical action, this set of actions can become reflexive, done automatically and recurrently.

What I realized is that steps (a) and (b) are close cousins to what meditation teachers encourage their students to do. The setting is different - deliberate quiet and inwardness in meditation versus to what I'm inclined to call "meditation in action" in learning to be an ethically sensitive clinician. But the outcomes the teacher hopes for in the student - empathic connection with others, compassion, and seeing the truths that underlie complexity - are the same.

Recognizing the kinship between mindfulness and medical ethics is a valuable insight for ethics educators. An increasing number of students know something about meditation and respect the practice. Recognizing that skill at meditation can enhance their grasp of medical ethics, and, that skill at medical ethics fosters some of the key skills for meditation, enhances both domains.

An Ethical Perspective on Shared Medical Appointments

Stories about shared medical appointments keep popping up in the news, most recently in this New York Times article. The format involves bringing together a group of patients - as many as 15, but typically 8 - 12 - with a doctor or nurse practitioner, for a 90 minute discussion of shared medical problems, such as diabetes. Although group visits are not for everyone, the response of patients who participate and clinicians who lead the sessions are generally quite positive.

Group visits arose to promote efficiency. Although current discussions describe the format as an innovation developed in response to the parlous state of contemporary medicine, in 1905 Dr. Joseph Hersey Pratt, a Boston physician, began to lead "classes" for patients with tuberculosis. Pratt documented results that were as good as the best sanataria, but his method fell into oblivion.

In 1975 I had the privilege of starting a group visit program for patients with chronic psychiatric ailments at the Harvard Community Health Plan HMO . I conducted the group in collaboration with an excellent psychiatric nurse. I spoke with patients individually and to the group as a whole. If I wanted to recommend a medication to patient A, I often asked patient B, who was taking the medication, to talk with A about it. It was set up as a "drop in" group. Patients could come every week or just intermittently.

Physicians who lead shared medical appointments experience a different relationship with patients than in the 1:1 format. The group is more informal, and the physician often acts as a facilitator of patient-to-patient exchange, rather than as an authority. The framework tends to bring out the humanity of clinicians and patients. It's difficult for the leaders to be cold, detached or pompous.

I don't know how well the aspiration for efficiency holds up, but I do know - from my own experience and from the literature - that group visits encourage a holistic, humane way of relating between doctors and patients. The rationale for the format tends to be presented in an apologetic manner: the health system is in a mess/physicians are too harried to pay enough attention/you'll get to spend more time with your doctor in a group. These statements are true. But apology undersells the value of shared medical appointments. For patients with chronic conditions that must be managed over time, the group format can bring out a patient's own strengths and initiative and allow physicians to tap into their capacity to care in a down-to-earth human manner in new ways.

That's an ethical achievement, not just a matter of efficiency!

[To learn more about shared medical appointments, a Massachusetts General Hospital guide to conducting group visits is here,  a description of the group visit program at the Cleveland Clinic is here, and a VA guide to setting  up a group visit program for patients with diabetes is here. If you would like pdf versions of my articles about Pratt and about the HMO group program, send me your email address via the comment function.]

Atheism, Humanism and Secular Ethics at the University of Miami

Between September 10, 2007 and today, I've written 82 posts about religion and spirituality. I've been especially interested in the moral underpinnings of the health professions. I've thought of health care as a calling throughout my career. But where does the call come from?

Historically, the call has been seen as coming from god and god's servants - saints, bodhisattvas and other benevolent beings who urge us to care for others. But what about health care workers who do not derive their calling from a theology?

I hope this question will be high on the list of research topics when the newly endowed chair of "atheism, humanism and secular ethics" at the University of Miami is filled. I learned from the New York Times article about the chair that it was endowed by Louis J. Appignani, an 83 year-old retired businessman who supports non-theist causes. The University was uncomfortable defining the chair as one of "atheism" studies, but Mr. Appignani insisted that the "atheism" be part of the title, and accepted the addition of "humanism and secular ethics."

In an increasingly secular population it's crucial to deepen public understanding of morality that is not based on religious theologies. Over the centuries, religious communities have been powerful advocates for good causes (e.g., abolition of slavery) but also for evil causes (e.g., "holy" war). For atheists and secular humanists to make a full contribution to the moral arc of the future, we need a deeper understanding of how the non-theological domain functions. Let's hope that the University of Miami chair contributes to this process.

When the chair is filled, there will be a great deal to learn from studying those who are called to the vocation of health care!

Borderline Personality Disorder and Public Health Ethics

An article in the May issue of the American Journal of Psychiatry - "The Emergence of a Generalist Model to Meet Public Health Needs for Patients with Borderline Personality Disorder" - shows how experts can move from a specialty niche to public health relevance. This isn't just a clinical act. It's also ethics in action!

Borderline Personality Disorder is a relatively common condition, said to affect 1%-2% of the population and to represent 15%-20% of psychiatric hospital admissions and 6% of primary care visits. People with the condition evince symptoms like: vulnerability to feeling abandoned; unstable relationships that oscillate between idealization and disenchantment; destructive impulsiveness; self-harm; difficulties controlling anger; transient psychotic episodes; and more. The condition takes a high toll on individuals, those involved with them, and the health professionals who try to help them.

In the past 25-30 years, three evidence-based forms of treatment have emerged:

• Dialectical behavior therapy. DBT involves a combination of weekly individual and group therapy that emphasizes understanding one's vulnerabilities and reaction patterns, combined with learning new self-management skills. 
• Mentalization-based treatment. This treatment is a variant of psychodynamic psychotherapy that focuses on better understanding of mental states in oneself and others, based on the hypothesis that patients with borderline personality disorder interpret and react to others in terms of their own fantasies, and that more realistic understanding will decrease their desperate emotional over-reactivity. Like DBT, mentalization-based therapy typically involves weekly individual and group sessions.
• Transference-focused psychotherapy. For this approach, twice weekly individual sessions are recommended. The treatment makes maximum use of the patient's reactions to the therapist as an avenue into modifying the internal structures that lead to the chaotic life pattern.

All three approaches can legitimately claim to have been validated. But all three require training and skill beyond the level of most mental health clinicians. Nine years ago Glen Gabbard, perhaps the leading educator in psychiatry, asked "Do all roads lead to Rome?" and suggested that the three techniques may reflect different ways of delivering common healing processes. In the just-published article that I cited above, John Gunderson, a leading researcher on BPD, builds on Gabbard's suggestion and offers a common-sense generalist model that emphasizes educating the patient about the condition, focusing on life outside of the office more than on the interaction between patient and therapist, integrating medication management, and selectively involving family and significant others.

I'm writing about this clinical issue in a venue devoted to health system ethics because the move from a specialist orientation to generalism embodies admirable public health ethics. Our U.S. health system tilts towards a specialist for every organ and condition. At its best, this approach cultivates deep clinical skills. But it also disarticulates the care of individuals into unrelated segments and mirrors the inequity of our wider society by providing a lot for the few and much less for the many.

When I did my residency in the 1960s, psychoanalytic training was regarded as the pinnacle of professional development. I valued the deep intellectual rigor of psychoanalysis, but couldn't see limiting my practice to a relatively small number of patients who would be seen 3-5 times per week, and who, by practical necessity, would have to be relatively affluent. 

Gunderson's article points in the direction I'd mapped out for myself at the start of my career. U.S. health care needs to strengthen its generalist orientation at the level of primary care and within specialties. Moving towards health insurance for all is the first step in correcting the moral failings of our health system. But the ultimate challenge is improving our commitment and capacity to provide excellent cost-effective care for the entire population. Gunderson's work illustrates what every segment of medicine needs to do.