Nicole Jane Brooke
Aged Care Consultancy, Australia
Title: Mindfulness in Care: Challenge the status quo by exploring a new way of thinking about your philosophy of care
Biography
Biography: Nicole Jane Brooke
Abstract
The philosophy of care is as central to organisational effectiveness, as are the values, vision and strategic plan. It creates a usable and practical foundation for all care interactions. To which one can enable effective communication, engaging synergies and evaluation of current and future needs across the organisation at every level. Mindfulness promotes the need to be present in the moment. The benefits of mindfulness include; improve quality of care and life, reduced anxiety, emotional stability, decreased incidence of depression, reduced stress, improved immune function, improved quality of sleep. Mindfulness is a state of being aware of what we are doing, how we are doing it, exploring more individual approaches for doing it, training our mind to be open to new opportunities and becoming more attuned to our own needs and the needs of our clients, team and partners. The foci of a core belief in mindfulness are the explicit need to find meaningful activities and develop relationships through autonomy, enablement, dignity, autonomy and privacy to name a few. The mind in mindfulness is about learning to mindful as opposed to mindlessness. Learning to be more effective, keeping an open mind, and actively participating in learning rather than just hearing or reading as we often become used to. Mindfulness speaks of the need to build a scaffold of knowledge and resourcing this adequately, rather than relying on a single point of contact or resource.
