A Bunker Garden: Mindfulness-Based Landscape Design to Restore Physicians from Burnout

Landscape architects design healing gardens at healthcare facilities to support patients, visitors, caregivers, and staff. Many acknowledge that medical staff regularly visit healing gardens to escape work-related stress (Marcus and Sachs, 2014). Rarely, however, are healing gardens on medical campuses designed specifically to support physicians' well-being. There is a void in healing garden design theory. Reports on the prevalence of physician burnout, warn of a widespread crisis and dismal reality within the medical community (T. D. Shanafelt et al., 2015). Researchers pronounce an urgent need for evidence-based interventions, which address individual contributing factors to burnout (Christina Maslach, Jackson, and Leiter, 1986). By investigating the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction program, an evidence-based therapy, clinically proven to cultivate emotional healing, for physicians suffering burnout, this research reveals how a therapeutic garden could meld mindfulness-based practices with environmental theory; healing garden design precedents; and healthcare design typologies. Finally, mindfulness-based landscape design guidelines describe how a private, restorative, healing garden could help maintain physicians' well-being and rehabilitate physicians experiencing burnout due to emotional exhaustion within the workplace.