Mindfulness-BasedStress Reduction
Mindfulness-BasedStress Reduction
Organizationaland business environments in the global arena are going throughastronomical transformations as a result of a conglomeration ofemerging factors like globalization, diversity, and informationtechnology among others. So many challenges and uncertainties havebecome prevalent in the workplace that most workers have ended updistressed and uncomfortable with their occupations. Some occupationsare affected by work-related stress than others. Nursing, forexample, is one of the areas with a high percentage of distressedworkers, thanks to challenges like patient demands, inadequatestaffing, poor working conditions and others. The challenges havedamaging implications for decreased productivity, occupationalstress, poor patient care and high nurse turnover among others.Therefore, to combat this undesirable trend, mindfulness-based stressreduction models have been recommended. The present paper evaluatessome articles on the subject to establish whether the findingssupport the MBSR intervention. It seeks to show that an eight-week (MBSR) meditation can reduceperceived work-related-stress among oncological nurses with less thanthree years of experience.
Duarte,J., & Pinto-Gouveia, J. (2016). Effectiveness of amindfulness-based intervention on oncology nurses’ burnout andcompassion fatigue symptoms: A non-randomized study. InternationalJournal of Nursing Studies,64,98-107.
Duarteand Pinto-Gouveia’s (2016) article reports on a study in which theyfound out that almost 40% of all nurses face stress and burnoutchallenges as a result of job-related challenges. Their study aims toexamine some of the approaches that can help mitigate the effect ofthese damaging health conditions. The study is founded on theunderstanding that mindfulness-based interventions are instrumentalto the reduction of work-related stress among individuals fromdiverse environments and populations, though the scholarship thatcovers their effect on the nursing profession is limited.
Duarteand Pinto-Gouveia (2016) relied on a sample of 94 nurses, all of themoncologists. Unfortunately, only 48 yielded data that was completeenough for a comprehensive analysis. Of the 48, 29 were enrolled inthe mindfulness intervention program, and the rest were used ascontrol. Twenty-six of the experimental group members were female.Results on the variances analyzed revealed that the interventionyielded substantial reduction of stress, burnout, fatigue, andself-compassion among others. The individuals in the control groupdid not register any significant changes in the observed variables.Thus, it became apparent that the mindfulness-related stressreduction program was an imperative in situations where nurses facedproblems like stress, burnout, and compassion fatigue among others.Duarte and Pinto-Gouveia (2016) also found out that the mindfulnessintervention was readily acceptable therefore, its applicability inthe nursing environment was welcome.
Theintervention can, therefore, be utilized in the mitigation ofundesirable effects of workplace challenges like patient demands,inadequate staffing, poor working conditions and others among nurses.Oncology nurses face these problems on a daily basis and need anintervention that promises some tangible results. Mindfulness-basedinterventions are workable and highly effective.
Farb,N. A., Segal, Z. V., & Anderson, A. K. (2012). Mindfulnessmeditation training alters cortical representations of interoceptiveattention. SocialCognitive and Affective Neuroscience,nss066.
Inthis article, Farb, Segal, and Anderson (2012) examine theeffectiveness of mindfulness meditation training in influencinginteroceptive attention. They believe that interoceptive attentionplays a pivotal role in the enhancement of processes responsible forthe provision of internal requirements of the body. Upon meetingthese internal functionalities, the journey toward the fulfillment ofthe conceptual targets begins. During this transition, the body ofthe individual tends to get a balanced health status as it activelybecomes attached to the external world.
Farb,Segal, and Anderson (2012) delved deeper into theexperience-dependent functional plasticity and looked at the accessto interoceptive representations. A comparison was made between MBSRand control groups. They found that mindfulness training showedgreater activity related to interoceptive attention, particularly inthe targeted regions. The recruitment of DMPFC was also decreasedamong the individuals who had undergone the mindfulness training.There was also a considerably lower level of visual pathwayrecruitment among the mindfulness training participants, which isalso known for its contribution in social enhancement.
Therefore,mindfulness training as examined by Farb, Segal, and Anderson (2012)can significantly trigger a balance between the interoceptiveattention and other external processes that can lead to balance inthe bodies of the affected individuals thus, ending up engaging themmore in the social world. Farb, Segal, and Anderson (2012) believethat this is a crucial way of helping relieve work-related stress.Novice nurses can embrace this approach whenever they face some ofthese inevitable challenges in the workplace that elevate theirdistress levels. The reduced stress has been found to significantlyreduce nurse turnover, a trend that has become common at an alarmingrate and that threatens the quality health care services offered.
Lutz,J., Herwig, U., Opialla, S., Hittmeyer, A., Jäncke, L., Rufer, M.,… & Brühl, A. B. (2014). Mindfulness and emotion regulation—anfMRI study. SocialCognitive and Affective Neuroscience,9(6),776-785.
Theinterest of the authors of this article has been drawn by theincreased application of mindfulness training in emotional control.Psychotherapeutic treatments are increasingly relying on mindfulnessin these processes. The main focus of the study was on the effect ofa short program of MBSR on emotional turbulence. The researchinvolved an examination of the mindfulness intervention, where theperception of negative pictures was evaluated for some individualsand others used as a control group. The mindfulness group had 24members and the other one had 22 (Lutz et al., 2014). It was foundthat the intervention heightened the prefrontal activations amidstthe perception of negative pictures. The mindfulness group recordedhigher activations in most of the tested regions, for example in thebilateral anterior insula and subcortically in left. In regions likethe amygdala and parahippocampal gyrus, there were reduced cases ofprefrontal activations. Such regions are the ones involved in emotionprocessing. Therefore, it implies that mindfulness trainingsignificantly controls emotional arousal.
Impliedly,mindfulness was selective in the areas that it increased activations,and in those it reduced them. For example, there was less activationin the posterior insula when the subjects were exposed to negativestimuli. Since arousal is often linked with the activation of theinsula, mindfulness instruction has a higher likelihood of triggeringless arousal-activation during the negative stimuli exposure. Anotherfinding that helps in drawing the conclusion that mindfulnesstraining is instrumental to emotional control is the negativecorrelation between trait mindfulness and right insula activation.The more mindful an individual is the less the emotional arousal theyface (Lutz et al., 2014). Overall, programs aimed at increasing themindfulness of distressed nurses should be embraced because they canhelp mitigate the negative implications of the condition.
Smith,S. A. (2014). Mindfulness‐BasedStress Reduction: An Intervention to Enhance the Effectiveness ofNurses` Coping With Work‐RelatedStress. InternationalJournal of Nursing Knowledge,25(2),119-130.
Justlike every other modern-day profession, nursing is infected with manystressors. Nursing is one of the most emotionally turbulentoccupations, thanks to factors like patient suffering, inadequatestaffing, and poor working conditions. The rise ofpatient-centeredness in health care centers has left the nurses withlittle time to focus on their personal well-being. Smith (2014)examines this trend and seeks to establish whether mindfulness-basedstress reduction approaches can help mitigate some of theramifications of these challenges facing nurses. Without effectiveinterventions, most nurses cannot cope with the challenges, and evensome end up leaving the jobs. Smith (2014) asserts that nurseturnover has always been high because there has been an insufficiencyof reliable interventions.
Inthis paper, Smith (2014) dwells on the examination of the works ofscholarship about mindfulness interventions so as to come up withdefinitive conclusions regarding their effectiveness. There issignificant empirical evidence to show that the use of MBSR helpsrelieve stress, burnout, and anxiety, as well as improve mood, focus,and empathy among nurses (2014). Smith sampled thirteen studies onthe topic, eleven of them quantitative. Most of the qualitativestudies examined relied on evaluation forms, emails, and focusgroups. None of the analyzed studies contained a mixture ofquantitative and qualitative findings. According to Smith, allstudies found that MBSR interventions lead to decreased stress,decreased burnout, decreased anxiety, improved focus, and generalself-improvement. It, thus, becomes evident that scholars agree onthe effectiveness of mindfulness-based stress reduction models.Though the degree of effectiveness might vary from one approach toanother, the general implication is that MBSR can be used by nurseswho are going through the work-related challenges that often triggerstress.
Conclusion
Theresults analyzed in all articles sufficiently show thatmindfulness-based stress reduction is effective in the mitigation ofconditions associated with stress, anxiety, and other undesirablemental pains. Each study looks at the particular aspects of controlthat mindfulness embraced in their different cases. Though theremight be other methods of managing stress out there, these studieshave undoubtedly proven that MBSR is effective and reliable.
References
Duarte,J., & Pinto-Gouveia, J. (2016). Effectiveness of amindfulness-based intervention on oncology nurses’ burnout andcompassion fatigue symptoms: A non-randomized study. InternationalJournal of Nursing Studies,64,98-107.
Farb,N. A., Segal, Z. V., & Anderson, A. K. (2012). Mindfulnessmeditation training alters cortical representations of interoceptiveattention. SocialCognitive and Affective Neuroscience,nss066.
Lutz,J., Herwig, U., Opialla, S., Hittmeyer, A., Jäncke, L., Rufer, M.,… & Brühl, A. B. (2014). Mindfulness and emotion regulation—anfMRI study. SocialCognitive and Affective Neuroscience,9(6),776-785.
Smith,S. A. (2014). Mindfulness‐BasedStress Reduction: An Intervention to Enhance the Effectiveness ofNurses` Coping With Work‐RelatedStress. InternationalJournal of Nursing Knowledge,25(2),119-130.
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