Mindful Self-Care and Resiliency (MSCR): A pilot trial of a brief mindfulness intervention to promote occupational resilience in rural general practitioners

Mindful Self-Care and Resiliency Intervention is a brief psychosocial intervention that integrates key principles and practices of mindfulness-based therapy with compassion fatigue prevention education. The program was developed by researchers from Curtin University based on principles from Gentry and colleagues (1998) and Segal and colleagues (2002). The MSCR intervention consists of a full-day educational workshop divided into four sessions of about 1.5 hours each. This is followed by three sessions (one session per week) over the next 3-week period. These sessions will be 1.5 hours in duration and provided in-person. All intervention groups will be facilitated by a clinical psychologist with extensive experience in running the intervention. A train-the-trainer model will be utilised whereby the facilitator will then provide a training session to the designated trainer who will then sit in on an entire intervention group. A central aim of the five mindfulness sessions (Session themes: Autopilot, Staying Present; Allowing / Letting Be; Thoughts as Thoughts; Review) is to learn mindfulness-based skills and practices to support Compassion Fatigue resiliency. Mindfulness sessions are adapted from an abbreviated protocol described by MacKenzie et al. (2006), based on Segal et al. (2002). Both formal (e.g., body and breath; body scan; mindful movement and stretching; sitting with the breath, body and thoughts) and informal practices (e.g., breathing space, mindful eating) as described by Williams and Penman (2011) will be included (about 10 to 25 minutes duration), and assigned as home-based practice exercises using a CD where applicable.