Abstract
Mindfulness based training (MBT) is becoming increasingly popular as a means to improve general wellbeing through developing enhanced control over metacognitive processes. In this preliminary study, we tested a cohort of 36 nurses (mean age = 30.3, SD = 8.52; 2 male) who participated in an 8-week MBT intervention to examine the improvements in sustained attention and its energetic costs that may result from MBT. Changes in sustained attention were measured using the psychomotor vigilance task (PVT) and electroencephalography (EEG) was collected both during PVT performance, and during a brief period of meditation. As there was substantial variability in training attendance, this variable was used a covariate in all analyses. Following the MBT program, we observed changes in alpha power across all scalp regions during meditation that were correlated with attendance. Similarly, PVT performance worsened over the 8-week period, but that this decline was mitigated by good attendance on the MBT program. The subjective energy depletion due to PVT performance (measured using self-report on Likert-type scales) was also less in regular attendees. Finally, changes in known EEG markers of attention during PVT performance (P300 and alpha-band event-related desynchronization) paralleled these behavioral shifts. Taken together, our data suggest that sustained attention and its associated costs may be negatively affected over time in the nursing profession, but that regular attendance of MBT may help to attenuate these effects. However, as this study contained no control condition, we cannot rule out that other factors (e.g., motivation, placebo effects) may also account for our findings.
Highlights
Sustained attention describes the ability to focus on task-relevant behavior and resist distractibility, over long periods of time
When energy changes were correlated with attendance, we found that nurses who attended more sessions reported smaller decreases in subjective energy following psychomotor vigilance task (PVT) performance (r = 0.372, p = 0.028)
When attendance was introduced as a covariate, our data show significant changes in PVT response speed and lapse counts, with better performance observed in nurses who attended more of the Mindfulness based training (MBT)
Summary
Sustained attention describes the ability to focus on task-relevant behavior and resist distractibility, over long periods of time. Despite the importance of sustaining attention in many on-the-job situations, attentional failures in such settings are common due to factors such as mind-wandering, motivational decline and fatigue, which can in turn lead to serious accidents. The medical profession is a textbook example of this: impairments in sustained attention in medical settings can result in errors that may seriously compromise the safety and well being of patients. A review of the different errors made by nurses found that lack of attentiveness was an important contributor to mistakes such as missing predictable complications and inadequate monitoring of patients, with potentially catastrophic results (Benner et al, 2002). We conducted a study to assess whether sustained attention in nurses might be improved via mindfulness training, an intervention that may have associated cognitive benefits (Chiesa et al, 2011).
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