Guided Mindfulness and Meditation Intervention to Encourage Relaxation and Reduce Staff Stress in a Labor and Delivery Unit

Abstract

Research shows that self-care promotes positive health habits that can benefit nurses by enhancing coping skills and guide how we respond to stress. In light of this, developing a guided mindfulness and meditation bathroom breaks (GMMBB) program can enable nurses find time for self-care during an impossibly busy shift. This presentation will describe a creative approach to implementing the GMMBB program and enhancing self-care among nurses to improve their well-being, coping skills, and patient care. Coping skills may not come naturally to a majority of nursing professionals in their work settings, and most hospitals may not have the resources needed to help nurses improve these types of skills. Aside from lack of resources such as accessible space, nurses hardly have time for a break. The proposed program intends to show how nurses can find time on the job to enhance their coping and stress management skills by using bathroom breaks to engage in a 5-minute GMM session. Imagine with me again, if you will, a nursing unit where nurses, through consistent opportunities for short, guided mindfulness and meditation sessions, encouraged during bathroom breaks, learn to recognize unproductive worry and anxiety for what they are and learn to train their minds to experience these thoughts completely differently. GMM teaches us to recognize an unproductive thought, acknowledge it for what it is, recall that we have had this thought before, and be reminded that it will pass. The success of this program will be measured by comparing baseline self-reported measures of distress (perceived stress, anxiety, and depression symptoms) before participating in the GMMBB program with self-reported measures of distress after 6 months of participation in the program, as well as increased nursing staff retention and enhanced patient satisfaction, as reflected in surveys. Research shows that GMM practiced consistently can enhance and improve quality of life and affect the quality of care nurses render to patients. Ensuring that nurses have access and opportunity to engage in these types of coping skills and resilience training can in turn help hospitals improve their patient satisfaction and nursing staff retention rates.