Professional development is learning to earn or maintain professional credentials such as academic degrees to formal coursework, attending conferences, and informal learning opportunities situated in practice. It has been described as intensive and collaborative, ideally incorporating an evaluative stage. There is a variety of approaches to professional development, including consultation, coaching, communities of practice, lesson study, mentoring, reflective supervision and technical assistance.
Pain management, pain killer, pain medicine, pain control or algiatry, is a branch of medicine that uses an interdisciplinary approach for easing the suffering and improving the quality of life of those living with chronic pain. The typical pain management team includes medical practitioners, pharmacists, clinical psychologists, physiotherapists, occupational therapists, physician assistants, nurses, and dentists. The team may also include other mental health specialists and massage therapists. Pain sometimes resolves quickly once the underlying trauma or pathology has healed, and is treated by one practitioner, with drugs such as analgesics and (occasionally) anxiolytics. Effective management of chronic (long-term) pain, however, frequently requires the coordinated efforts of the pain management team. Effective pain management does not mean total eradication of all pain.
Engaged Buddhism, also known as socially engaged Buddhism, refers to a Buddhist social movement that emerged in Asia in the 20th century, composed of Buddhists who are seeking ways to apply the Buddhist ethics, insights acquired from meditation practice, and the teachings of the Buddhist dharma to contemporary situations of social, political, environmental and economic suffering, and injustice. Finding its roots in Vietnam through the Thiền Buddhist teacher Thích Nhất Hạnh, Engaged Buddhism was popularised by the Indian jurist, politician, and social reformer B. R. Ambedkar who inspired the Dalit Buddhist movement in the 1950s, and has since grown by spreading to the Indian subcontinent and the West.
Mindfulness is the practice of purposely bringing one's attention in the present moment without evaluation, a skill one develops through meditation or other training. Mindfulness derives from sati, a significant element of Buddhist traditions, and is based on Zen, Vipassanā, and Tibetan meditation techniques. Though definitions and techniques of mindfulness are wide-ranging, Buddhist traditions explain what constitutes mindfulness such as how past, present and future moments arise and cease as momentary sense impressions and mental phenomena. Individuals who have contributed to the popularity of mindfulness in the modern Western context include Thích Nhất Hạnh, Herbert Benson, Jon Kabat-Zinn, Richard J. Davidson, and Sam Harris.
The Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust is a specialist mental health trust based in north London. The Trust specialises in talking therapies. The education and training department caters for 2,000 students a year from the United Kingdom and abroad. The Trust is based at the Tavistock Centre in Swiss Cottage. The founding organisation was the Tavistock institute of medical psychology founded in 1920 by Dr. Hugh Crichton-Miller. It has long been regarded as a professional centre of excellence of international renown, in its application of psychoanalytic ideas to the study and treatment of mental health and interpersonal dynamics.
Clinical governance is a systematic approach to maintaining and improving the quality of patient care within the National Health Service (NHS). Clinical governance became important in health care after the Bristol heart scandal in 1995, during which an anaesthetist, Dr Stephen Bolsin, exposed the high mortality rate for paediatric cardiac surgery at the Bristol Royal Infirmary. It was originally elaborated within the United Kingdom National Health Service (NHS), and its most widely cited formal definition describes it as:
A framework through which NHS organisations are accountable for continually improving the quality of their services and safeguarding high standards of care by creating an environment in which excellence in clinical care will flourish.
Jon Kabat-Zinn is an American professor emeritus of medicine and the creator of the Stress Reduction Clinic and the Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care, and Society at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. Kabat-Zinn was a student of Zen Buddhist teachers such as Philip Kapleau, Thich Nhat Hanh and Seung Sahn and a founding member of Cambridge Zen Center. His practice of yoga and studies with Buddhist teachers led him to integrate their teachings with scientific findings. He teaches mindfulness, which he says can help people cope with stress, anxiety, pain, and illness. The stress reduction program created by Kabat-Zinn, mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR), is offered by medical centers, hospitals, and health maintenance organizations, and is described in his book Full Catastrophe Living.
The Vipassanā movement, also called the Insight Meditation Movement and American vipassana movement, refers to a branch of modern Burmese Theravāda Buddhism which promotes "bare insight" (sukha-vipassana) to attain stream entry and preserve the Buddhist teachings, which gained widespread popularity since the 1950s, and to its western derivatives which were popularised since the 1970s, giving rise to the more dhyana-oriented mindfulness movement.
A community interest company (CIC) is a type of company introduced by the United Kingdom government in 2005 under the Companies Act 2004, designed for social enterprises that want to use their profits and assets for the public good. CICs are intended to be easy to establish, with all the flexibility and certainty of the company form, but with some special features to ensure they are working for the benefit of the community. They are overseen by the Regulator of Community Interest Companies.
Supervision is used in counselling, psychotherapy, and other mental health disciplines as well as many other professions engaged in working with people. Supervision may be applied as well to practitioners in somatic disciplines for their preparatory work for patients as well as collateral with patients. Supervision is a replacement instead of formal retrospective inspection, delivering evidence about the skills of the supervised practitioners.
Buddhism includes an analysis of human psychology, emotion, cognition, behavior and motivation along with therapeutic practices. Buddhist psychology is embedded within the greater Buddhist ethical and philosophical system, and its psychological terminology is colored by ethical overtones. Buddhist psychology has two therapeutic goals: the healthy and virtuous life of a householder and the ultimate goal of nirvana, the total cessation of dissatisfaction and suffering (dukkha).
Dharma Primary School was the first primary school and nursery in Britain to offer an education based on Buddhist values. It celebrated its 20th anniversary in 2015. It was an independent school and nursery based in East Sussex, on the south east coast of England. The 14th Dalai Lama was a patron.
Buddhism in the United Kingdom has a small but growing number of adherents which, according to a Buddhist organisation, is mainly a result of conversion. In the UK census for 2011, there were about 178,000 people who registered their religion as Buddhism, and about 174,000 who cited religions other than Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, Judaism, Islam, Jainism and Sikhism. This latter figure is likely to include some people who follow the traditional Chinese folk religion which also includes some elements of Buddhism.
IMS MAXIMS is a supplier of electronic health record software to the public and private sectors in UK and the Republic of Ireland.
GOV.UK Verify is an identity assurance system developed by the British Government Digital Service (GDS). The system is intended to provide a single trusted login across all British government digital services, verifying the user’s identity in 15 minutes. It allows users to choose one of several companies to verify their identity to a standard level of assurance before accessing 22 central government online services.
The Plum Village Tradition is a school of Buddhism named after the Plum Village Monastery in France, the first monastic practice center founded by Thích Nhất Hạnh. It is an approach to Engaged Buddhism mainly from a Mahayana perspective, that draws elements from Zen and Theravada. Its governing body is the Plum Village Community of Engaged Buddhism.
BreathworksCIC is an international mindfulness organization founded in the United Kingdom, which offers mindfulness-based approaches to living well with pain, stress, and illness. It is known particularly for developing the approach of mindfulness-based pain management (MBPM), which shares many elements with mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) but is adapted specifically for those living with chronic pain and illness, and incorporates a distinctive emphasis on the practice of 'loving-kindness'. Breathworks is a registered Community Interest Company (CIC) in the United Kingdom, and has nearly 500 accredited teachers working in 35 countries.
Vidyamala Burch is a mindfulness teacher, writer, and co-founder of Breathworks, an international mindfulness organization known particularly for developing mindfulness-based pain management (MBPM). The British Pain Society has recognized her "outstanding contribution to the alleviation of pain", and in 2019 she was named on the Shaw Trust Power 100 list of the most influential disabled people in the UK. Burch's book Mindfulness for Health won the British Medical Association's 2014 Medical Books Award in the Popular Medicine category.
Mindfulness-based pain management (MBPM) is a mindfulness-based intervention (MBI) providing specific applications for people living with chronic pain and illness. Adapting the core concepts and practices of mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) and mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT), MBPM includes a distinctive emphasis on the practice of 'loving-kindness', and has been seen as sensitive to concerns about removing mindfulness teaching from its original ethical framework. It was developed by Vidyamala Burch and is delivered through the programs of Breathworks. It has been subject to a range of clinical studies demonstrating its effectiveness.
The Breathworks Foundation is a registered charity in the United Kingdom that aims to broaden access to mindfulness and compassion training. It provides bursaries enabling people in financial hardship to access the programs of Breathworks CIC, develops partnerships with charities and community groups to expand the delivery of mindfulness training, and initiates research projects investigating the efficacy of Breathworks programs. It was founded by Vidyamala Burch and is advised by a group of academic experts.
