Presented by Sharmila Dissanaike, MD, FACS, FCCM
Tuesday, April 14, 2020
7:00 pm (Central)
Acclaimed speaker, blogger and surgeon, Dr. Sharmila Dissanaike discusses stressors of a busy surgeon brought about by COVID-19, and offers mindfulness and other techniques to manage stress and bring balance back into men and women’s lives.
Learning objectives
- Recognizing different responses to Covid pandemic through the 5-step Kubler-Ross model
- Describe techniques to recognize amygdala hijack and how to defuse it
- Identify the need to hold space for events we have no control over, and techniques for doing so
During this 30-minute webinar, attendees will be able to participate in a brief guided meditation and have the opportunity to ask questions.
More about Sharmila Dissanaike
Sharmila Dissanaike is Professor of Surgery and the Peter C. Canizaro Chair at the Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center. She is also the Medical Director of the Level 1 Trauma Center and Assistant Director of the regional Burn Center. In addition to her clinical and research interests which focus on trauma, burns, critical care and acute care surgery, she has an interest in ethics, humanism and personal development among surgeons. She serves on the Ethics committees of both the American College of Surgeons (ACS) as well as the American Burn Association as Chair, and is faculty at the McGovern Center for Ethics Humanity and Spirituality. She has over 30 years of personal experience with mindfulness meditation, which she now teaches in the context of burnout prevention and personal development to surgeons, physicians and medical trainees.
Dr. Dissanaike is originally from Sri Lanka. She completed medical school on scholarship to the University of Sydney, Australia prior to arriving in the US for surgical training in 2001. She started her residency at the Beth Israel Medical Center in New York, and subsequently transferred to Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center in her second year after marrying Michael Cohen, a podiatrist from the West Texas/Eastern New Mexico region. Having overcome the initial culture shock of moving to West Texas from Manhattan, she returned as faculty in 2007 after completing a trauma fellowship at the University of Washington Harborview Medical Center in Seattle. She and Michael have since lived happily in Lubbock, and have a bull-boxer named Tootsie and Scrappy, a rescue pup of dubious parentage.
