Compass of Mindful Caregiving

Reduce Burnout, Increase Compassionate Care

Our Mission: Healthcare Transformation

Reduce Burnout, Increase Compassionate Care

At WisdomWay, we believe compassion and mindfulness will transform healthcare. Research shows us that healthcare workers experience more stress and patients desire more connection than ever before. And our disconnection? Failure to connect compassionately results in increased medical error, the third leading cause of death after heart disease and cancer.

How can we reduce provider burnout, increase patient satisfaction, and improve healthcare safety?

Whether you're a physician, nurse, midwife, social support, or mental health provider looking to approach your work in a new way, WisdomWay offers a new paradigm in healthcare with the Compass of Mindful Caregiving.

Compass of Mindful Caregiving

SKILLS & KNOWLEDGE: Best practices and evidence-based care are important, but how we use our expertise is a skill in itself. Are we making room for shared decision-making? Staying curious? Skillfully collaborating?


RIGHT RELATIONSHIP: Establish more effective connections & expectations, increasing engagement.


PARTNERING: Learn to listen and communicate with greater awareness, creating an environment of collaboration.


COMPASSION: Bring meaning and connection to your work as you build resiliency and manage stress.


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The Compass of Mindful Caregiving guides you to refine your awareness and builds practical counseling approaches designed to cultivate trust and improved communication with those you serve, and with colleagues and collaborators. Practicing in this framework not only leads to healthcare quality improvement, but also gives you the tools needed to build resiliency and to reconnect with the generative quality of being in the field of caring professions.

It's all about health and wellbeing—for yourself and those in your care.

Your work has unavoidable stress exposures, pressures, and often, little downtime. We understand how easy it is to go on autopilot and only later discover just how exhausted or traumatized you really feel. The Compass of Mindful Caregiving can be used as an anchor to reflect and refocus your attention in the moment, and as a safety net for better problem solving and relationship building skills.

WisdomWay provides a path for mindful and sustainable healthcare.

This approach to Relationship-Centered Care was developed by WisdomWay Institute's Founder Karen Laing who has spent years working in maternal and family health. 

As a clinician and Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction instructor, she has combined her healthcare & integrative health coaching training, her experience in patient advocacy, and a refined attention to awareness and compassion practices. The result is a method based in science and aimed at creating authentic, compassion-fueled relationships with clients/patients that are grounded in respect, trust and shared decision-making.  

She understands the value of maintaining an evidence-based practice and will teach you how mindfulness helps remove barriers as well as supports you to act in the moment with your patients' best interest in mind and for your own health and wellbeing.  

Where does mindfulness fit into healthcare?

A brief history
Where has mindfulness made it's way into healthcare?

Since 1979, Jon Kabat-Zinn and colleagues have been bringing the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) model into the lives of patients with chronic pain, cancer & heart disease, resulting in reduced symptoms and improved outcomes. Zindel Segal, Mark Williams and John Teasdale introduced mindfulness into the treatment of depression and anxiety with Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy. Nancy Bardacke created the Mindfulness-Based Childbirth and Parenting (MBCP) program for expectant parents which aims to reduce stress and anxiety in pregnancy.

In Duke Integrative Medicine’s framework for preventative healthcare, mindful awareness is the foundation from which health choices can be made consciously. This quality of present-moment awareness associated with behavior change and preventative health is substantiated by Kelly McGonigal and USC addiction researchers Nicholas Barr & Jordan Davis as well as others.

Mindfulness is a known stress buffer that can reduce physician burnout and increase empathy. Saki Santorelli developed the first Mindfulness for Medical Students in 1987, and today, MBSR programs are now offered in more medical programs than ever before.

We can bring mindfulness-based interventions to our patients, and we have seen the results of bringing MBSR to those who work in healthcare or in caregiving capacities.

Mindfulness practices can support

  • Symptom management & stress reduction for patients
  • Behavior change and improved engagement
  • Mood and emotional regulation
  • Attention and safety
  • Reduction in physician/caregiver stress impacts
  • Awareness of unintended bias
  • Compassion & self-compassion

Beyond a personal practice: Transforming our work
Individuals can benefit from a personal practice but at WisdomWay we also turn our attention to the application of relational mindfulness within the healing relationship and within systems. We’re interested in the ways that awareness can be cultivated to enhance the quality of the healing relationship between practitioner and patient/client, or the family member cared for by a loved one.  Additionally, we build our learning upon a mindfulness pedagogy, emphasizing awareness of our own experience as the ground from which we can understand the needs of those we serve or care for.

Where to begin
If you're new to mindfulness, WisdomWay Institute offers practical training, including 8-week MBSR programs, mindfulness retreats, and learning retreats. You’ll experience a supportive environment to become familiar with mindfulness practices, the Compass of Mindful Caregiving, and the 6 Qualities of embodied mindfulness which are the WisdomWay frameworks for mindful caregiving.


Our programs take your practice “off the cushion” and into transformative relationships with others.


At WisdomWay Institute our intention is to be your compass for mindful and sustainable professional practices that will enhance your wellbeing while also improving quality of care and care outcomes.

The mindful listening exercise was challenging - I can see that it's so valuable to practice it. I've turned it into a daily practice. It's been so helpful with my kids and my husband, as well as my clients. It's so interesting to have always believed that I am a good listener, but this really is showing me how much I need to keep practicing.  

-WisdomWay Alumni