62. Mindfulness in Surgery: Enhanced Stress Resilience Training with Dr. Carter Lebares Artwork

Operate with Zen

While incredibly rewarding and honored vocations, careers in medicine and surgery are fraught with stress, burnout and challenges in work-life balance. OWZ is intended to open dialogue about a mindful approach to surgery - to create a space where physicians and surgeons can enhance their life's work and life experience with a focus on presence, purpose and practical skills. OWZ combines didactic-like monologues to provide baseline information and available scientific data on practical topics like time management, sleep hygiene and burnout; as well as interviews with surgeons and experts to share what works and doesn't work in their daily routines.

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Operate with Zen

62. Mindfulness in Surgery: Enhanced Stress Resilience Training with Dr. Carter Lebares

March 21, 2023 • Phil Pierorazio • Season 6 • Episode 5

Dr. Carter Lebares, MD is a Gastrointestinal Surgeon at the University of California San Francisco and the Director of the UCSF Center for Mindfulness in Surgery. In addition to being a thoughtful and skilled surgeon, she ran two randomized trials incorporating mindfulness based practices into surgery. She developed ESRT or Enhanced Stress Resilience Training from principles of John Kabat-Zinn’s Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) to specifically apply to surgeons and surgical training. With focused lessons and practical exposure Dr. Lebares has shown objectively that improvements in attentional focus, emotional recognition, and cognitive reappraisal learned through mindfulness translate into better surgical performance and training in and out of the operating room. She tells us her story, how mindfulness impacted her career and continues to impact her development as a surgeon and human. Dr. Lebares is one of my inspirations as we try to spread the benefits of a mindful approach to surgery and I enjoy every moment I get to speak with her. I hope you enjoy as well!!

UCSF Center for Mindfulness in Surgery: https://mindfulsurgeon.ucsf.edu/

Randomized Trial in JAMA Network Open: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2734060