Stillness: The Benefits of Mindfulness Meditation

October 2025 | Vol. 69, No. 3
Written by Jade McNulty, PCOM OMS-III

How do you find stillness? We get twenty-four hours in a day, but how often are you really present? The medical field is a constant stream of stressful encounters and never-ending decision-making. A twelve-hour shift can fly by in the blink of an eye without any awareness of the time passing. Days turn into weeks, and all of a sudden, years have gone by. 

To combat this, it is important to find grounding in the present moment to avoid missing it. Meditation provides an outlet to find that grounding and root yourself in something sturdy. It may feel difficult to dedicate time for yourself, but it’s impossible to pour from an empty cup. It is just as important to look after yourself as it is to look after your patients. Self-care is necessary for survival, and only a few minutes per day could change your life for the better. 

Define Meditation

Meditation is a bit of an abstract idea, but it can be conceptualized as focusing your attention on one particular thing, or nothing at all. Common points of focus include your breathing pattern, concentrating on both the in and outs of your breath, and/or how your body feels as breath flows in your body. Another goal is to avoid thoughts for a minute. Instead of thinking about what you have to do later in the day or fantasizing over your next meal, you simply think about nothing. Thoughts may arise, but instead of dwelling on them, you can just acknowledge them and let them pass you by. 

OP-MED: Impact of AI on Medical Education

June 2025 | Vol. 69, No. 2
Written by Katherine Galluzzi, DO

In April, an interdepartmental meeting at PCOM was scheduled via Zoom. When the admin couldn’t attend, they opted to have ChatGPT generate the transcript and minutes. The result: a 36-page transcript accurately attributing comments based on screen names (except for group room comments, which defaulted to me). As my colleagues joked, I tend to do most of the talking anyway.

But it was the minutes that amazed us: clear, concise, and well-organized. Tasks were assigned, next steps outlined, and the documentation was better than anything we’d seen before. ChatGPT made us appear more efficient than we felt.

AI already permeates our lives—from Siri curating playlists to frustrating chatbot interactions. These ChatGPT-generated minutes weren’t my first experience with generative AI. Last year, the AOBFP explored using ChatGPT for board question writing. Security concerns prevented allowing ChatGPT to "learn" on our content, but we prompted it to create clinical questions. While the output was impressively fast and seemingly accurate, citations were problematic—some nonexistent or incorrect. In AI terms, it was “hallucinating.”