Spring Back from Stress with Mindfulness
By John M. de Castro, Ph.D.
“Among healthcare professionals, mindfulness training can reduce psychological and physiologic stress, emotional distress, and burnout while improving empathy, job satisfaction, and sense of well-being.” – Lois Howland
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. 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. Burnout 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.
Preventing burnout has to be a priority. But, it is beyond the ability of the individual to change the environment to reduce stress and prevent burnout, so it is important that methods be found to reduce the individual’s responses to stress; to make the individual more resilient when high levels of stress occur. Contemplative practices have been shown to reduce the psychological and physiological responses to stress. Indeed, mindfulness has been shown to be helpful in treating and preventing burnout, increasing resilience, and improving sleep.
Working early in healthcare careers to improve resilience could work to prevent burnout. So, it makes sense to investigate how mindfulness training during healthcare education may promote resilience and lower the likelihood of future burnout in healthcare workers. In today’s Research News article “Correlates and Predictors of Resilience among Baccalaureate Nursing Students.” See summary below or view the full text of the study at:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5376833/, Mathad and colleagues recruited nursing students who completed measures of mindfulness, resilience, empathy and perseverative thinking.
They found that the higher the levels of mindfulness the higher the levels of resilience even in a multiple regression model considering the other measures. They also found that higher levels of resilience were, in turn, associated with higher levels of empathy and lower levels of repeated negative thinking and unproductive negative thinking. This is a correlative study so causation cannot be determined. But, the findings fit with previous research where mindfulness was manipulated through training and caused an increase in resilience. So, it is reasonable to conclude that the current findings were probably due to mindfulness improving resilience.
Hence, it appears that mindfulness increases resilience and this in turn reduces negative thinking and improves empathy. This all suggests that mindfulness would tend to protect healthcare providers from the effects of stress, making the individuals more resilient and less likely to experience burnout.
So, spring back from stress with mindfulness.
“By being in the present moment we help ourselves as health care providers to moderate the challenges of stress, even having the opportunity to transform previously overwhelming situations into ones of challenge and mastery. This presence also helps us to be better clinicians. We are more present, more available, and better able to access empathy, compassion, and caring skills.” – Arnie Kozak
CMCS – Center for Mindfulness and Contemplative Studies
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Study Summary
Mathad, M. D., Pradhan, B., & Rajesh, S. K. (2017). Correlates and Predictors of Resilience among Baccalaureate Nursing Students. Journal of Clinical and Diagnostic Research : JCDR, 11(2), JC05–JC08. http://doi.org/10.7860/JCDR/2017/24442.9352
Abstract
Introduction
A growing body of literature recognizes the importance of resilience in the nursing profession. Both mindfulness and resilience aid in handling stress, stress increases the risk of rumination and/or worry especially in females and they are more empathetic than other healthcare students.
Aim
To identify correlates and predictors of the resilience among nursing students.
Materials and Methods
This is a descriptive correlation study and we have recruited 194 participants (1-4th year B.Sc Nursing) from Government College of Nursing and NIMHANS College of Nursing in Bangalore, India. The following instruments were used to collect the data, Freiburg Mindfulness Inventory (FMI), Toronto Empathy Questionnaire (TEQ), Perseverative Thinking Questionnaire (PTQ) and Connor–Davidson Resilience Scale (CD-RISC). Data was analysed using Pearson’s correlation test and multiple regression analysis.
Results
Resilience is significantly correlated with mindfulness, perseverative thinking and empathy in nursing students. Based on regression analysis this model accounted for almost 33% of variance in resilience. This result is of interest as mindfulness alone explained 23% of the variance and unproductive Repeated Negative Thinking (RNT) and RNT consuming mental capacity predicted 8% and 2% respectively.
Conclusion
These results support the importance of resilience and mindfulness in nursing students. Hence, resilience and/or mindfulness enhancing interventions should be inculcated in nursing education.