Avoiding Burnout: The Effectiveness of Mindfulness Practices to Enhance Well-being Among Registered Nurses During the Covid-19 Pandemic

Research Objectives: To identify if registered nurses who care for patients in an adult, inpatient, post-acute rehabilitation setting during the COVID-19 pandemic, experience burnout as measured by the Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI) toolkit.

Design: Sixteen-week quasi-experimental, pretest/posttest quantitative study, with two groups (intervention and comparison).

Setting: Conducted in a single, urban, adult inpatient post-acute rehabilitation center located in Philadelphia, PA.

Participants: Participants were recruited by convenience sampling, utilizing nurses aligned with two units at the institution of study (N =38). Intervention (n =25); Comparison (n =13).

Interventions: There were two comparable groups: a control/comparison group and experimental/interventional group. The intervention group, participated in six-weeks of online pre-recorded mindfulness learnings and activities, using Palouse’s Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) Program. The comparison group received no mindfulness activities. The intervention encompassed pre-recorded mindfulness learning videos and activities provided by the Palouse’s MBSR program.

Main Outcome Measures: The MBI assessment toolkit consist of two combined surveys, the MBI and Areas of Work-life Survey (AWS). These two surveys are tools used to measure levels of burnout and workplace predictors that may lead to burnout.

Results: Data findings supported statistically significant improvement in MBI (EE = p < 0.041) and areas of work (PA = p < 0.0002) scoring post-intervention.
Mean differences between pre- and post- scores following the intervention, revealed improvements in their scores on the MBI. Data findings supported statistically significant improvement in MBI subscale PA (33.08 to 37.6; p = 0.00006). Clinically significant changes were noted in MBI subscale EE (27.6 to 24.0) and DP subscale (5.68 to 4.36) post-intervention.

Conclusions: Throughout the research, burnout was defined as emotional exhaustion (physical and mental), depersonalization (compassion fatigue), and lack of self-achievement. Common themes emerged from the literature suggesting that there are internal and external predictors related to burnout. The literature also revealed that age, gender, relationship status, and years as a nurse are internal factors related to burnout. The external common predictors included, work schedules, job satisfaction, heavy workloads, and unhealthy work environments.

Author(s) Disclosures: No conflicts or relationship to declare.