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Impact of Single-Breath Mindfulness Technique on Physician Burnout and Stress

Pflugeisen BM, Mundell K, Ebersole D, Drummond D and Chen D

Introduction: Stress and burnout among health care providers can have serious repercussions. Mindfulness techniques, particularly when delivered by abbreviated training programs, have been studied for their success in managing symptoms and perceptions of stress and burnout among health care workers serving at the bedside, in clinic, as specialists, and in administration.

Materials and Methods: Our suburban community hospital system introduced an eight week, video-module based, single-breath mindfulness technique training program to a group of 23 physicians with a range of experience (0-38 years; 48% primary care). Repeated measures ANOVA were used to evaluate changes across the study period (baseline, end of study, and 8 weeks post-intervention). Multiple linear regression was used to assess the relationship between burnout/stress measures at baseline and provider sex, age, years in practice, and field of practice (primary care or specialty).

Results: 19 (83%) providers completed the program and 12 (52%) completed assessments at each time point. Significant improvements were observed across the study period in emotional exhaustion (p=0.01), personal accomplishment (p=0.007), and stress (p<0.001). The extent to which providers depersonalize their patients was not significantly impacted (p=0.14). No significant associations were observed between provider characteristics and burnout/stress metrics at baseline. However, at the α=0.10 level, primary care providers reported a significantly lower sense of personal accomplishment (-6.0 points, 95% CI: -12.2, 0.2 points; p=0.08) at baseline.

Conclusions: Symptoms of stress and burnout are equally likely to be observed in providers across discipline, age, sex, and experience. A flexible, easy to use, single-breath based mindfulness program can yield significant improvements for these professionals.