Wellness Resources

Comments Off on Wellness Resources

Counseling/Psychotherapy and Referral Services

The Office of Resident Wellness offers accessible counseling/psychotherapy and referral services for currently training Residents and Fellows, addressing a full range of personal and professional concerns. This confidential service is free of charge to all trainees.

Appointments and information can be gained by contacting the Wellness Coordinator, Diana Nuss: pgwellness@utoronto.ca or (416) 946-3074.

Career Resources

Practice Ontario @UofT

Practice Ontario is a new career-planning service for University of Toronto postgraduate medical residents. Make an appointment through practiceontario@healthforceontario.ca today. Learn more about Practice Ontario at University of Toronto.

For more information contact:

P: 1-800-596-4046 ext. 3697
E: practiceontario@healthforceontario.ca

Career Centre at U of T Student Services

Free career counseling services to recent U of T graduates within 2 years of graduating.

Resident Doctors of Canada (formerly CAIR)

Visit the new Resident Doctors of Canada website for information on:

  • TiPS – Transition Into Practice
  • CAIR provides assistance and advice with employment after residency.

American College of Physicians

Visit the Resident Career Counseling website.

Financial Resources

MD Management

MD Management (MDM) offers full financial planning services in 49 branch offices. Our more than 190 designated MDM advisors will meet with you to explore your financial goals, review your financial picture, assess your risk tolerance, and make recommendations.

Investors Group

Investors Group is an organization with a holistic approach to wealth creation, protection, and management. This includes cash management, tax planning, risk management, retirement planning, investment planning, and estate planning.

 

Fatigue Management

Fatigue Management Tools

The Fatigue Management booklet by the Fatigue Risk Management Task force is aimed at postgraduate trainees, leaders, and policy makers in Canadian Postgraduate Medical Education

The Epworth Sleepiness Scale (ESS) is a self-administered questionnaire with 8 questions. It provides a measure of a person’s general level of daytime sleepiness, or their average sleep propensity in daily life. It has become the world standard method for making this assessment.

The Professional Quality of Life Scale (ProQOL) is the most commonly used measure of the negative and positive affects of helping others who experience suffering and trauma.

Mindfulness in Medical Training

“The term mindfulness refers to a quality of awareness that includes the ability to pay attention in a particular way: on purpose, in the present moment, and nonjudgmentally. Mindfulness includes the capacity for lowering one’s own reactivity to challenging experiences; the ability to notice, observe, and experience bodily sensations, thoughts, and feelings even though they may be unpleasant; acting with awareness and attention (not being on autopilot); and focusing on experience, not on the labels or judgments applied to them”. – M. Krasner et al., 2009.

“Working memory is an important feature of mind-fitness. Not only does it safeguard against distraction and emotional reactivity, but it also provides a mental workspace to ensure quick and considered decisions and action plans.” Amishi Jha, Professor, University of Miami

Mindfulness fits well with medicine. As a means of improving well-being and clinical performance, mindfulness has shown great potential in research trials with health-care professionals. As the above quotes suggest, research findings on the effects of mindfulness have demonstrated improvements in attention and working memory, well-being, emotion regulation and empathy.  Research on physician wellness has also linked depression, and burnout with increased rates of perceived medical error. When we combine these two areas of research it becomes possible to draw a line between the practice of mindfulness skills, better physician well-being, and improvements in the quality of care. Basically, a win-win situation for health professions and patients.

The following links lead you to reliable sources for guided meditations, MBSR and MBCT courses, on-line mindfulness programs and sources of research on mindfulness.

Mindfulness Resources

 

Audio Resources for Mindfulness

 

Meditation and Mindfulness Classes

Mindfulness Video Lecture

Professor Mark Williams from Oxford University delivers a lecture to the public about the science of mindfulness.

 

The Mindfulness Clinic

The Mindfulness Clinic has both a class and a one-day retreat, free of charge. The Meet, Eat, Sit is a free lunchtime meditation that is 1.5 hours in length; 45-minutes is devoted to a meditation. For the Meet, Eat, Sit meditation, bring your own lunch. The Clinic also has a free one-day retreat, with guided sitting and walking meditations.

 

The Centre for Mindfulness Studies

The centre for Mindfulness Studies offers Mindfulness courses, workshops, and retreats for both personal and professional development and offer MBCT programs for people who are coping with Depression and Anxiety or are in remission.

 

Online Meditation Sessions

UCLA Semel Institute

The online course can be accessed from anywhere in the world. You can work at your own pace during this 6 week course. The online course is pre-recorded. Participants will have access to audio and video materials as well as the opportunity to participate in a weekly live chat with one of the instructors and other participants.

 

Introduction to Mindfulness Meditation (Insight Meditation Centre)

This introductory course is based on Gil Fronsdal’s six-week Introduction to Mindfulness Meditation class. It’s supplemented with written material, exercises, and reflections for bringing the practice into daily life. Ines Freedman, as the online teacher for the course, provides further teachings.

 

William Kennedy Stress Management Workshops

Shinsei Way unique programs are specifically designed to guide practitioners toward healthy, happy, meaningful, and fulfilling lifestyles. Find yourself more relaxed, more aware and better able to enjoy life to its fullest.

Stress Management Resources

 

Mental Health Online

A comprehensive, online mental health service from Swinburne University of Technology offering information, assessment, online diagnosis, and treatment programs (“eTherapy”) for anxiety disorders.

 

Depression Center (DC)

A 16-session interactive course written by a team of practicing therapists and research scientists. The course is continually updated with feedback from real users. One of the most popular tools is the moderated online discussion board. Trained health educators guide discussions and maintain a helpful, accurate, and supportive environment.  In addition, the Depression Center programs provide a wide range of useful features, including downloadable workbooks; homework and tracking sheets; the Mood Tracker™, which is an interactive tracking tool to monitor symptom improvement over time; weekly check-ins and reviews; a baseline assessment; a progress tracker; and glossaries with easy-to-understand explanations of common terms and medication.

 

Panic Centre

Using a 12-session approach, the Panic Center (PC) is designed to help those suffering from anxiety and panic disorders. Outcome results have demonstrated a “dose-response” relationship, with significant improvement in frequency and severity of anxious episodes after only four sessions. As with the other programs, the moderated online discussion boards provide a supportive and anonymous means of connecting with others. Trained health educators guide discussions and maintain a helpful, accurate, and supportive environment. After the confidential registration is completed, users have access to a wide range of features, including: downloadable workbooks; homework and tracking sheets; weekly check-ins and reviews; moderated online discussion boards, including the web-based instant messenger for private conversations; and glossaries with easy-to-understand explanations of common terms and medications.

 

Mood Gym

An innovative, interactive web program designed to prevent depression. It consists of five modules, an interactive game, anxiety and depression assessments, downloadable relaxation audio, a workbook, and feedback assessment.

 

Open to Hope Foundation

An online resource helping people find hope after loss. Its mission is to provide information and resources for people who have experienced loss, to provide a forum where such people can learn from and help each other, and to share educational grants and networking support for those whose studies are focused on improving the care of people who grieve.

 

CALM

Computer Assisted Learning for the Mind contains podcasts and audio files that can be easily uploaded to mobile devices. The tunes included within this website are geared towards mental resilience, managing stressors, healthy relationships, and meaning in life.

WordPress Appliance - Powered by TurnKey Linux