Mindfulness for Healthcare Students

Project Overview

A growing body of literature demonstrates that high levels of anxiety and stress-related health concerns are experienced by undergraduate university students, in particular medical and nursing students. For students to become effective healthcare professionals it is important that they have the mental and emotional skills to manage stress. Mindfulness training has been found to reduce stress, and improve concentration, self-awareness and emotional regulation which enables greater perspective-taking and empathy. The aim of this study was to evaluate the effect a structured mindfulness based program on the development of empathy in the undergraduate Traditional Chinese Medicine students. The results indicated a statistically significant increase in the overall mean empathy scores  (using the Jefferson Scale Empathy- Health Profession Students) pre-post intervention.

Publication

Dean, S., Foureur, M., Zaslawski, C., Newton-John, T., Yu, N. & Pappas, E. (2017). The effects of a structured mindfulness program on the development of empathy in healthcare students. NursingPlus Open, 3, 1-5.
http://www.nursingplusopen.com/article/S2352-9008(16)30020-6/fulltext#s0025