WHO WE ARE

Our Mission

To create a space where healthcare professionals can explore and support their own wellness.

Our Goals

• Develop innovative programs designed to enhance the wellness of healthcare professionals.
• Provide healthcare professionals with specific skills that they incorporate into their professional work.
• Evaluate the impact of our programs through rigorous research.
• Create an environment that supports respectful dialogue between healers from different traditions.
• Publish educational materials that foster wellness and dialogue.

Background

These are remarkable and exciting times for medicine. We are witnessing an explosive growth in our biological insights into disease and we are able to offer our patients treatment options that would have been unimaginable just a decade ago.

Despite all of these scientific advances, healthcare professionals are experiencing escalating levels of stress, burnout and depression. Rather than reducing our workload, technology demands more and more of our time, and ourselves. Our work as healers seems to be measured in mechanical terms such as workload and productivity rather than human terms such as healing and compassion.

Unfortunately, our medical education has done very little to prepare us for the personal challenges we encounter in our work as healers. We have spent so many years learning scientific facts but virtually no time exploring ourselves. We have learned “what we know” is of more importance than “who we are”. Our medical education prepares us well for a multiple-choice test but leaves us feeling helpless when we encounter the human suffering of our patients. What has been missing is an “education of the heart” that can complement the “education of the head” provided by our medical education system. Carried upon the two wings of intellect and heart, modern medicine can provide our patients a wiser and more compassionate healthcare that recognizes the importance of mind, body, and spirit in the process of healing

What is The Center for Professional Renewal?

The CPR at The Institute for Religion and Health supports programs specifically designed to support the personal, spiritual and physical wellness of professional healthcare providers. These programs have a strong emphasis on contemplative practice and include a wide range of spiritual disciplines and the expressive creative arts.

CPR Programs are designed and taught by nationally recognized teachers with many years of experience in their particular tradition and/or teaching modality Each program provides healthcare professionals with innovative opportunities to explore and support our wellness. Programs are open to a general professional audience or may be specifically intended for a professional group (e.g. doctors, nurses, psychotherapists etc)Some of the programs offered will include:

• Mindfulness Meditation
• Tibetan Meditation
• Contemplative Prayer
• Tibetan Yoga
• Hatha Yoga
• Creative Writing
• Tai Chi and Qi Gong
• Photography
• The Compassionate Caregiving Program
• Integral Approaches to Healthcare
• Retreat Programs for Physicians and Nurses

Alejandro Chaoul, PhD
Director, Center for Professional Renewal
alec@trulkhor.org

Click here to view a list of resources for professional renewal.