Teaching Compassionate Mind Training to help midwives cope with traumatic clinical incidents

Hollins Martin, CJ; Beaumont, Elaine; Norris, Gail; Cullen, Gavin

Abstract

Compassionate Mind Training (CMT) is taught to cultivate compassion and teach midwives how to care for themselves. The need to build midwives' resilience is recognised by the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC), who advocate that mental health coping strategies be embedded into the midwifery curriculum. In this respect, CMT can be used as a resilience-building method to help midwives respond to self-criticism and threat-based emotions with compassion. The underpinnings of CMT involve understanding that people can develop cognitive biases or unhelpful thinking patterns, co-driven by an interplay between genetics and the environment. Within this paper, the underpinning theory of CMT and how it can be used to balance psychological threat, drive, and soothing systems are outlined. To contextualise the application to midwifery practice, a traumatic incident has been discussed. Teaching CMT has the potential to improve professional quality of life, and reduce midwife absence rates and potential attrition from the profession.

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Sep 2, 2020
• Online Publication Date: Dec 29, 2020
• Publication Date: Jan 2, 2021
• Deposit Date: Nov 20, 2020
• Publicly Available Date: Jun 29, 2021
• Journal: British Journal of Midwifery
• Print ISSN: 0969-4900
• Publisher: MA Healthcare
• Volume: 29
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 26-35
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.12968/bjom.2021.29.1.26
• Keywords: Maternity and Midwifery
• Publisher URL: https://doi.org/10.12968/bjom.2021.29.1.26
• Related Public URLs: https://www.magonlinelibrary.com/loi/bjom
• Additional Information: Access Information : This document is the Accepted Manuscript version of a Published Work that appeared in final form in British Journal of Midwifery, copyright © MA Healthcare, after peer review and technical editing by the publisher. To access the final edited and published work see https://doi.org/10.12968/bjom.2021.29.1.26.