By John M. de Castro, Ph.D.
“Medical professionals are burdened daily with the pain and suffering of patients. Many work long hours, and regularly face stressful situations. This burden does not come without consequence: 60 percent of physicians report having experienced burnout at some point in their careers.” – Emily Nauman
Stress is epidemic in the western workplace with almost two thirds of workers reporting high levels of stress at work. In high stress occupations, like healthcare, burnout is all too prevalent. It is estimated that over 45% of healthcare workers experience burnout. Currently, over a third of healthcare workers report that they are looking for a new job. Nearly half plan to look for a new job over the next two years and 80% expressed interest in a new position if they came across the right opportunity.
Burnout is the fatigue, cynicism, emotional exhaustion, sleep disruption, and professional inefficacy that comes with work-related stress. It not only affects the healthcare providers personally, but also the patients, as it produces a loss of empathy and compassion. Sleep disruption is an important consequence of the stress. “Poor or inadequate sleep can contribute to poor personal health and burnout and adversely affect the quality of care” (Kemper et al. 2016).
Regardless of the reasons for burnout or its immediate presenting consequences, it is a threat to the healthcare providers and their patients. In fact, it is a threat to the entire healthcare system as it contributes to the shortage of doctors and nurses. Hence, preventing existing healthcare workers from burning out has to be a priority. Mindfulness has been demonstrated to be helpful in treating and preventing burnout, increasing resilience, and improving sleep. Another factor that could affect healthcare workers’ responses to stress is self-compassion. By treating oneself with kindness and understanding the effects of stress can be mitigated. So, it makes sense to investigate the relationship of mindfulness and self-compassion to stress symptoms in healthcare workers.
In today’s Research News article “Are Mindfulness and Self-Compassion Associated with Sleep and Resilience in Health Professionals?” See:
or see summary below or view the full text of the study at:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4523072/
Kemper and colleagues do just that. They solicited participation of adult healthcare workers (n = 213) via email which provided a link to a survey that measured demographic characteristics, mindfulness, self-compassion, sleep, resilience, global mental and physical health, and perceived stress. Simple correlation analysis and multiple linear regression analysis were performed upon the survey responses.
They found that the higher the level of mindfulness, self-compassion, resilience, and physical and mental health the lower the level of sleep disturbance and the greater the level of resilience. The greater the level of perceived stress the greater the sleep disturbance and the lower the resilience. Mindfulness and self-compassion were highly related and the higher their levels the greater the levels of physical and mental health and the lower the levels of sleep disturbances and perceived stress.
These findings underscore the significant positive relationships between mindfulness and self-compassion with resilience and with mental and physical health and significant negative relationships with sleep problems and stress. Hence, being more mindful improves the chance that the healthcare worker will be more resilient, healthier, less stressed, and sleep better. Similarly, having greater self-compassion, being kind and understanding toward the self, also improves the chance that the individual will be more resilient, healthier, less stressed, and sleep better. So, mindfulness and self-compassion appear to improve the health and well-being of healthcare workers. But, it should be noted that the study was correlational and did not manipulate mindfulness and self-compassion. So, causal connections cannot be conclusively demonstrated.
So, improve sleep and resilience with mindfulness and self-compassion.
“Mindfulness gives doctors permission to attend to their own health and well-being. But it also allows doctor to help patients by listening more, talking less, and seeing what the patients need.” – Catherine Beach
CMCS – Center for Mindfulness and Contemplative Studies
This and other Contemplative Studies posts are also available on Google+ https://plus.google.com/106784388191201299496/posts
Study Summary
Kemper, K. J., Mo, X., & Khayat, R. (2015). Are Mindfulness and Self-Compassion Associated with Sleep and Resilience in Health Professionals? Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine, 21(8), 496–503. http://doi.org/10.1089/acm.2014.0281
Abstract
Objectives: To describe the relationship between trainable qualities (mindfulness and self-compassion), with factors conceptually related to burnout and quality of care (sleep and resilience) in young health professionals and trainees.
Design: Cross-sectional survey.
Setting: Large Midwestern academic health center.
Participants: 213 clinicians and trainees.
Outcome measures: Sleep and resilience were assessed by using the 8-item PROMIS Sleep scale and the 6-item Brief Resilience Scale. Mindfulness and self-compassion were assessed using the 10-item Cognitive and Affective Mindfulness Scale, Revised and the 12-item Self-Compassion Scale. Health was assessed with Patient-Reported Outcomes Measurement Information System (PROMIS) Global Health measures, and stress was assessed with the 10-item Perceived Stress Scale. After examination of descriptive statistics and Pearson correlations, multiple regression analyses were done to determine whether mindfulness and self-compassion were associated with better sleep and resilience.
Results: Respondents had an average age of 28 years; 73% were female. Professions included dieticians (11%), nurses (14%), physicians (38%), social workers (24%), and other (12%). Univariate analyses showed normative values for all variables. Sleep disturbances were significantly and most strongly correlated with perceived stress and poorer health, but also with less mindfulness and self-compassion. Resilience was strongly and significantly correlated with less stress and better mental health, more mindfulness, and more self-compassion.
Conclusions: In these young health professionals and trainees, sleep and resilience are correlated with both mindfulness and self-compassion. Prospective studies are needed to determine whether training to increase mindfulness and self-compassion can improve clinicians’ sleep and resilience or whether decreasing sleep disturbances and building resilience improves mindfulness and compassion.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4523072/