The effects of mindfulness on health profession students’ simulation training outcomes: An integrative review

Abstract

Health profession students (HPSs) continuously experience psychological issues which can exacerbate cognitive errors and harm emotional well-being. The Healthcare simulation environment is stressful and overwhelming in nature and may impair learning outcomes. Therefore, integrating psychological interventions into simulation-based learning (SBL) instructional design may alleviate students’ psychological distress and improve their learning outcomes. Objectives: to examine the effects of mindfulness on health professions students’ SBL outcomes. Design: a literature review, based on Whittemore and Knafl’s (2005) updated methodology was used in this study. Data sources: We investigated PubMed, ERIC, ScienceDirect, and Google Scholar to find papers addressing the effects of mindfulness on health professions students’ SBL outcomes. We targeted Results: This integrative review suggests that although mindfulness improves SBL outcomes, HPSs still struggle to transfer mindfulness benefits to real clinical practice. Conclusion: research on mindfulness in healthcare SBL is in its infancy, thus, further research is needed to prove mindfulness effects on HPSs’ SBL outcomes.