Evaluation of a socio-cognitive mindfulness program using a mobile application to promote nursing students'...

Socio-cognitive mindfulness is highly applicable in educational contexts and has demonstrated benefits for mindfulness, emotion regulation, and empathy; however, nursing research in this area remains limited, with most digital interventions focusing on meditation-based mindfulness. This study aimed to evaluate a mobile application-based socio-cognitive mindfulness program with regard to nursing students' mindfulness, emotion regulation, and empathy.

A quasi-experimental pretest-posttest design with a nonequivalent control group was employed. The participants were 70 third-year nursing students from a single university located in South Korea (35 experimental, 35 control). The experimental group participated in a six-week, 12-session socio-cognitive mindfulness program delivered through a mobile application, while no intervention was received by the control group. Validated scales for socio-cognitive mindfulness, emotion regulation (reappraisal and suppression), and empathy were used for data collection. Independent t-tests were used to compare between-group differences in pre-post change scores.

The experimental group showed an improvement in socio-cognitive mindfulness in comparison with the control group (p = .020, Cohen's d = 0.415). Similarly, reappraisal increased in the experimental group in relation to the control group (p = .031, Cohen's d = 0.377). However, suppression and empathy showed no significant change between groups.

The mobile socio-cognitive mindfulness program was associated with pre-post improvements in mindfulness and adaptive reappraisal, while changes in suppression and empathy were not detected. Integrating such programs into nursing curricula may support psychological flexibility, and more interactive and extended methods may be needed to foster empathy.

Not applicable.