Background

Critical care is a stressful workplace for nursing staff. Mindfulness-based stress reduction programmes are an emerging concept to manage stress in nursing, but little is known about the impact of such interventions, especially in critical care settings.

Aims and objectives

A quality improvement initiative was introduced to explore the effects of a mindfulness-based stress reduction intervention on a cohort of critical care nurses in terms of quality of life, perceived stress, mindfulness awareness, and sickness and absence rates.

Methods

A pre-/post-interventional design recruited nurses (n = 25) working within a critical care unit to undertake the intervention. Participants were asked to complete psychometric questionnaires at three time points, pre-course (0 months), immediately post-course (8 weeks), and at a follow-up point at month 4. Sickness and absence rates were analysed to detect differences pre- and post-course. Retention rates were ascertained by numbers of participants completing the psychometric tests.

Findings

Overall, positive correlations were found when comparing pre-course vs 8-week mean scores of satisfaction with life (P < .001), reduced perceived stress (P < .001), and mindfulness awareness (P = .002). Bootstrap analysis of the data confirmed that positive outcome measures were more significant at the 4-month mark in reduced perceived stress and mindfulness awareness (P < .001) compared with the satisfaction with life scale (P = .41). There was no significant change in sickness rates pre- and post-intervention (P = .69). The retention rate was 70% at month 4.

Conclusions and recommendations

Mindfulness training is a feasible and accepted intervention that critical care nurses may benefit from in terms of quality of life, perceived stress, and mindfulness awareness. This has positive outcomes for staff and patients.