Addressing Burnout Among PeriAnesthesia Nurses Through a Mindfulness-Based Self-Help Intervention: A Quality...

Since the COVID-19 pandemic, burnout across the nursing workforce has become a widespread issue, driving nurses to leave their positions or leave the nursing workforce entirely. Mindfulness-Based Self-Help (MBSH) Interventions have emerged as a promising method to reduce burnout in nurses. At a large urban cancer center in New York, a quality improvement project was implemented to reduce burnout among nurses in the Post-Anesthesia Care Unit (PACU) using a MBSH Intervention.

A quality improvement project implemented using the Plan-Do-Study-Act model.

A MBSH Intervention was implemented using a pre-test/post-test design over a period of four weeks. Twenty PACU staff nurses were provided a four-week subscription to the mindfulness-based application Headspace. Baseline burnout was assessed using the Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI). The MBI was repeated post-intervention after four weeks, along with a qualitative survey assessing acceptability of the intervention.

There was a statistically significant reduction in emotional exhaustion scores on the MBI post-intervention (n = 17, p =.021). There were also improvements in depersonalization and personal accomplishment, however these improvements did not reach the level of statistical significance. Ninety-four percent of participants reported on the post-test survey that they would consider using the intervention or a similar one again in the future.

The implementation of a MBSH intervention was associated with an improvement in burnout among nursing staff, who reported a high level of satisfaction towards the project application. These results suggest that MBSH interventions may represent an effective tool to address burnout in perianesthesia nurses.