Abstract

Stress and burnout are endemic in the health care profession, and the transition to practice is associated with even more stress and anxiety for new graduate nurses (Boehm & Tse, 2013). Researchers have demonstrated that mindfulness-based interventions mitigate stress and burnout and improve the workplace environment and patient outcomes (Perla et al., 2017; van den Riet et al., 2018). This scholarly evidence-based practice project assessed the impact of integrating mindfulness training into an existing nurse residency program. The team measured burnout, stress, and mindfulness via an online survey at the beginning of the February 2020 residency cohort with repeat measures at three and six months. The outcome measures were analyzed, comparing the means and standard deviations from control and intervention cohorts using unpaired t-tests assuming unequal variances. Pre-program, there was no statistically significant difference between cohorts’ stress, burnout, and mindfulness scores, and, as anticipated, the stress and burnout scores increased for both cohorts at six months. However, the mindfulness scores decreased in both the intervention and comparison cohorts. The intervention cohort reported significantly less burnout and stress and increased mindfulness than the comparison cohort at six months. Given the COVID-19 pandemic, this was a timely intervention associated with reduced stress and burnout for this population while lessening the decrease in mindfulness compared to the non-intervention group. Therefore, mindfulness training was fully integrated into the nurse residency program for future cohorts and added to other curricula.

Date of publication

Spring 4-23-2021

Document Type

DNP Scholarly Project

Language

english

Persistent identifier

http://hdl.handle.net/10950/3667

Committee members

Colleen Marzilli, Sandra Petersen, Cheryl Parker

Degree

Doctor of Nursing Practice

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