The term patience gets tossed around as a command to wait quietly without any complaints. While primarily used in this context, there are surprising benefits to patience for both individuals and organizations. In this article we look at patience in relation to mindfulness and dive into the research related to healthcare.
How Mindfulness Enables Patience
Patience is considered a foundational attitude within mindfulness. It's an important element because it enables us to stay present and calm even when facing challenges or slow-moving situations. By focusing on the present, mindfulness helps us become more aware of our thoughts and emotions, reducing reactivity and enhancing our ability to cope with stress.
Here's a summary of how patience works with mindfulness:
- Reduced Impulsivity: Mindfulness helps reduce impulsivity by increasing awareness of our automatic reactions. When we are mindful, we can observe our immediate responses to situations without acting on them, allowing us to choose a more thoughtful and patient response.
- Enhanced Emotional Regulation: Studies have shown that mindfulness improves emotional regulation, making it easier to manage frustration and anger. This emotional stability contributes to greater patience, as we are less likely to be overwhelmed by negative emotions.
- Encouraged Acceptance: Mindfulness encourages acceptance of the present moment, including its difficulties and uncertainties. This acceptance fosters patience by helping us understand that not all problems require immediate solutions and that some things are beyond our control.
Patience in Healthcare
As research underlying patience spans many decades starting with the rise of cognitive psychology in the 1960s to today's neuroscience, we focus on its relevance to healthcare. While there are interesting studies that suggest benefits of patience to the brain, relationships, and productivity, there is limited research on the impact specifically for healthcare professionals and organizations.
Here's what we found:
- Patience can improve trust and care quality in rural locations: In a study related to patient perception of doctor communication skills, patience was recommended as a way to build trust with patients, especially in less densely populated areas. Doctors can build trust by leveraging patience and by using simpler words rather than professional terms to communicate with patients.
- Consider patience as an organizational value: In a healthcare setting where health is impaired, certain approaches can improve care quality. In a study looking at the relationship between nurses' values, four values were emphasized to elevate nursing care: hope, patience, courage, and persistence.
- A way to deal with difficult patients: Healthcare professional with high care standards can leverage patience to deal with difficult patients. A cross-sectional study looked at ways of coping with difficult patients and they noted these soft skills in order of importance: nonjudgmental listening, patience, tolerance, and empathy.
"Doctors who had a hurried attitude during their visits were perceived by patients as uncaring." - Gu., et al 2022
Practice Patience in the Context of Mindfulness
Patience from an individual standpoint can help people appreciate the present moment and trust the plan. In the demanding world of healthcare, this mindset facilitates both healthcare professionals and their patients to navigate challenges with resilience and composure for the long haul.
References
- Decode Nursing Burnout Causes With Acceptance and Letting Go
- Patience as a virtue: Religious and psychological perspectives
- An examination of patience and well-being
- Patient perception of doctor communication skills and patient trust in rural primary health care: the mediating role of health service quality
- Relationship between nurses' professional values, empathy, and patience: A descriptive cross-sectional study
- Attitudes and behaviors of physicians in dealing with difficult patientsand relatives: a cross-sectional study in two training and research hospitals