Mindfulness-informed Cancer Care

Fostering well-being for medical professionals and their patients

A Workshop for medical students by Trish Bartley from Oxford Mindfulness Foundation

Workshop for those who are training in medicine and interested in work with people with cancer or other chronic illnesses and would like to know more about mindfulness - explore what this might offer them and their work.

It is relevant to those who have some experience in mindfulness and those who have none. 

Mindfulness has been found to offer support to people experiencing stress and pressure. It is early days, however there is promising research that mindfulness practice may contribute to improving the wellbeing of healthcare professionals (Lomas et al, 2018, Kriakous et al, 2021).

This is much needed since working with people with cancer is demanding on many levels. Whilst new treatments offer the potential of improved outcomes, the nature of the disease unavoidably brings anxiety and uncertainty for patients and their families – which impacts on those who work with them.

This workshop offers the chance not only to cultivate self-care positively – but also to learn ways of bringing mindfulness to inform the practice of the healthcare practitioner in their work with the patient / client. This in turn may benefit both the staff member, their team, and the patient / client.

About the workshop leader

Trish Bartley has been involved in mindfulness-based teaching since the beginnings of Mindfulness-based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT). She started teaching mindfulness in hospital to people with cancer in 2001, supported by Mark Williams and John Teasdale (two MBCT founders).

She adapted the program and published it in 2012 and has since taught MBCT-Ca in groups to several hundred people with cancer. She currently works online with people with advanced cancer and trains mindfulness teachers in the UK, Europe and sometimes further afield in Africa and Asia. She regularly teaches workshops at Oxford Mindfulness Foundation about group-work and enquiry.

Trish has a background in development and participatory process work. She has written four books including Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy for Cancer (Bartley, 2012) a handbook for mindfulness teachers; Mindfulness: A Kindly Approach to Being with Cancer (Bartley, 2017) a book for people with cancer themselves; and a new book Teaching Mindfulness-Based Groups (Bartley & Griffith, 2022).