Abstract
ABSTRACT Poor wellbeing and burnout are significant issues among health-care professionals (HCPs) and may contribute to unsafe practice. In this exploratory study, we aimed to: provide the first investigation of the combined and unique influences of these psychological factors in predicting safe practice; confirm the role played by mindfulness in relation to wellbeing, burnout and safe practice; and investigate whether values and self-compassion predict additional variability above and beyond mindfulness skills. Ninety-eight NHS staff completed measures of wellbeing, burnout, perceived safety of practice, mindfulness, values and self-compassion. Practitioners with higher perceived safety of practice reported higher levels of mindfulness, but not values or self-compassion, particularly lower experiential avoidance and nonjudgmental attitude toward difficult thoughts. Mindfulness explained significant variability in psychological distress (20%), emotional exhaustion (8%), cognitive weariness (10%), patient safety related to oneself (7%), and related to work (8%). Values (obstruction) added unique variance for psychological distress (12%) and physical fatigue (10%). Moreover, self-compassion explained a small yet significant portion of variability in emotional exhaustion. These preliminary findings suggest that mindfulness processes may be associated with perceived safety of practice. The results also indicate that mindfulness-based interventions for HCPs may benefit from the inclusion of values-based action components and self-compassion practices.
Highlights
Poor wellbeing and high levels of work-related stress are well documented in health-care professionals (HCPs) (Johnson et al, 2018; O’Connor et al, 2020)
Four hierarchical regressions were tested to explore whether: 1) mindfulness explained psychological distress, burnout and perceived safety of practice; 2) values would add a unique contribution to mindfulness in explaining psychological distress, burnout, and perceived safety of practice; 3) SC would add a unique contribution, after mindfulness and values, in explaining psychological distress, burnout, and perceived safety of practice; 4) psychological distress, burnout, and perceived safety of practice could be explained by the addition of mindfulness, values and self-compassion mechanisms together to work-related worry and rumination
Experiential avoidance (β = −.21, p = .04) and mindfulness-nonjudgment (β = −.23, p = .04), at step 1 explained 10% of the variance. For both perceived safety of practice related to one’s self (β = .27, p = .003) and perceived safety of practice related to work (β = −.33, p = .02), mindfulness-nonjudgment alone explained, respectively, 7% and 8% of the variance
Summary
Poor wellbeing and high levels of work-related stress are well documented in health-care professionals (HCPs) (Johnson et al, 2018; O’Connor et al, 2020). These effects may affect the health and wellbeing of ‘second victims’ – clinicians who encounter a medical error or witness adverse event (Stewart et al, 2015) Given these challenges, we designed the current study to examine the potential influences of various psychological processes on both stress-related and patient safety outcomes among HCPs. we explored the role played by a number of variables proposed by the theories underlying ‘third wave’ cognitive behavioural thera pies, such as Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), mindfulness-based inter ventions (MBIs), and Compassion Focused Therapy (CFT) as important determinants of psychological wellbeing, alongside more established factors such as work-related worry and rumination. Secondary aim (1) To explore whether mindfulness, values and SC explain unique variability in wellbeing, burnout and safety of practice beyond work-related WR
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