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Analyzing the Sacred Moments That Heal the Healers
Angela Hiefner, PhD, behavioral health specialist, was feeling especially exhausted when she was tapped by a primary care physician to evaluate a patient for behavioral health services.
'She shared about being evicted from her apartment, worrying about her son, and feeling fearful about the current immigration political climate,' Hiefner, the director of behavioral health in the Department of Family and Community Medicine at UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, said. 'We talked about how difficult these things have been for her and her family and were able to get her connected with one of the primary care clinic's mental health clinicians.'
The interaction helped Hiefner slow down and reconnect with her purpose of work, she said.
'It's a perfect example of how meaningful connections and meaningful work can ease the burden of workdays that feel especially chaotic and difficult to keep up with,' she said.
A study published online in JAMA Network asked internal medicine physicians about experiences similar to Hiefner's, using the term 'sacred moments' to describe these interactions.
'We defined these moments as deeply meaningful connections between two people that can sometimes have qualities of transcendence or boundlessness or spiritual qualities,' said Jessica Ameling, MPH, research area specialist lead at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, and lead author of the study.
The study surveyed 629 internal medicine physicians (59.2% White, 60.9% men) from June 2023 to May 2024, assessing burnout, coping strategies, and whether they had experienced sacred moments in practice.
A little under two thirds of physicians said they had ever experienced a sacred moment with a patient (34.7% reported a few times each year, and 36.8% reported only a few times in their career).
Physicians who experienced sacred moments several times or more throughout the year showed reduced odds of burnout than those with less frequent experiences (odds ratio, 0.29; 95% CI, 0.14-0.60; P = .001). Those who discussed these moments with their colleagues also showed lower odds of burnout, however, nearly three fourths reported either never or rarely doing so. Nearly 5% of physicians said they always or often discussed their sacred moments.
'I think in medicine, like in a lot of professional fields, it is easy to get caught up in the day-to-day nuts and bolts of the job, and sometimes we forget to have explicit conversations about why we do the work, what makes it meaningful,' Ameling said. 'I think this is one of the beautiful things about discussing sacred moments, the renewed focus on 'why I went into medicine' and the meaningfulness of human connection.'
