News & Events: Mindful Surgeon

Dr. Carter Lebares joins Present Moment, a podcast and website dedicated to the exploration of contemporary mindfulness in society, to speak about Efficacy of Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Training in Surgery. As secular mindfulness finds more traction in the world, it's also meeting new perspectives on what practice could be. While traditional forms remain of value to those seeking outcomes that are rooted in a religious context, mindfulness is also being studied under the lens of science. Dr. Carter Lebares is a gastrointestinal surgeon at UCSF Medical Center. She received her medical degree [...]

In this pilot randomized clinical trial of 21 first-year surgery residents led by PI Carter Lebares, MD,  director of the UCSF Center for Mindfulness in Surgery, taking a modified mindfulness-based stress reduction class was associated with higher mindfulness, lower stress, better executive function scores, faster motor skills, and unique activation of neural substrates associated with executive control and self-awareness during an emotional regulation task compared with control participants. Mindfulness-based stress reduction appeared to mitigate stress and enhance executive function in [...]

What is the background for this study? Dr. Lebares: This study was inspired by extensive evidence of the effectiveness of mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs) for mitigating stress and enhancing performance in other high-stress populations like police and the military. We know that overwhelming stress is related to burnout and to cognitive errors – two critical issues within surgery, today. This prompted us to tailor and streamline an MBI specifically for surgeons, and to test it in our trainees. MedicalResearch.com: What are the main findings? Dr. Lebares: This was a pilot study, as [...]

Jon Kabat-Zinn, Ph.D, the universally acclaimed mediation instructor and Professor emeritus at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, recently gave the "Second Annual Ellen Hughes Lectureship" in Herbst Hall at UCSF Mount Zion, "The Key to Clinician Wellbeing through Mindfulness: Embodied Practice, Embodied Presence". Kabat-Zinn is world-renowned for developing the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) course, a fixture of integrated medicine, and the founding director of Stress Reduction Clinic at UMass.  During the Q&A following his talk, Kabat-Zinn lauded the research [...]

UCSF News reports on the results of study led by Carter Lebares, M.D., assistant professor and director the UCSF Center for Mindfulness in Surgery, to assess burnout in general surgery residents. An online survey was distributed in September, 2016, to all ACGME-accredited general surgery programs. Stress, anxiety, depression, resilience, mindfulness, and alcohol use were assessed and analyzed for prevalence. The results, published online in the Journal of the American College of Surgeons on Oct. 26, 2017, were stunning, finding that "7 of 10 trainee surgeons in the survey experienced burnout [...]

The UCSF Center for Mindfulness in Surgery was recently awarded grants by the Physicians Foundation and UCSF Medical Center "Excellence Fund" to support a study of mindfulness training of faculty in the Departments of Surgery and Anesthesia. The program, led by Carter Lebares, M.D., Principal Investigator on the study, is also funded by the Department of Surgery, which has supported a similar study by Dr. Lebares in surgical interns.  Physician burnout, which comprises emotional exhaustion, depersonalization and diminished satisfaction with one's work, has been documented in medical [...]