Does the intervention of mindfulness reduce levels of burnout and compassion fatigue and increase resilience in pre-registration students? A pilot study

Introduction: In the current clinical working environment it is important that therapeutic radiography students are fully prepared not just clinically but emotionally for a working professional life. Mindfulness has shown promise, as a self-care strategy, in the improvement of burnout, resilience and compassion fatigue in other professions; however, it has not been used with therapeutic radiography students. Methods: Eight pre-registration therapeutic radiography students were recruited to undergo a five week mindfulness course; six students from the year below were recruited to act as a control arm (no mindfulness). Data was collected using a series of validated tools at baseline, week five, month three and 12 months after the start of the study: 1. The five-facet mindfulness short form questionnaire (FFMQ-SF)1 2. Maslach Burnout Inventory Student Survey (MBI-SS)2 3. Professional Quality of Life (ProQOL) 5 questionnaire3 4. Connor Davidson Resilience-short form scale (CD-RISC)4 Results: The MBI-SS scale demonstrated 29% of the sample experienced emotional exhaustion and 43% increased cynicism. The other tools showed a positive trend with the intervention; however, these were not statistically significant. Conclusion: Although no statistically significant differences were demonstrated between the study arms, some interesting trends have been noted. The key finding was the identification of burnout experienced by almost a third of the study sample. This suggests that a new area of study is warranted to further investigate the factors contributing to burnout in the student population

Staying Well: A Follow Up of a 5-Week Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction Programme for a Range of Psychological Issues

112 women and 37 men, with an average age of 50 years were referred for MBSR training with a range of chronic psychological issues. All participants completed the Warwick–Edinburgh Mental Wellbeing Scale (Tennant et al. in Health and Quality of Life Outcomes 5:63, 2007) before and after the mindfulness training programme. A significant overall effect of pre/post training was found and this difference was not related to a specific disorder. The results suggest that a ‘brief’ dose of MBSR can have a positive impact on measures of well-being in a manner that is not related to patient characteristics. A follow-up of 28 participants confirms that participation in the 5-week Living Mindfully MBSR programme significantly enhances psychological well-being immediately after training, and this benefit is maintained up to 4 years after training. Continued practice in mindfulness meditation showed an insignificant relationship to well-being scores at follow up. Qualitative data suggest that the 5 week MBSR is an effective means of developing emotion regulation and psychological well-being