Mindfulness (oppmerksomt nærvær)

In this study we investigate whether practising mindfulness can reduce the level of experienced stress and increase the communication skills for staff in an inpatient psychiatric unit.

Speaking about quality of health service one usually refers to system factors such as accessibility/availability, equipment and therapeutic methods proven to be effective. But quality also highly depends on personal capacity and skills of the people serving these systems.

A great deal of complains at health care personnel can be understood as lack of communication and interaction. In this connection ability to be mindful is of great importance. Mindfulness is a capacity one can train, but it is also affected by stress. There are reasons to believe that stress in the health care system, as in society as general, is increasing and that healthcare professionals are exposed to develop chronic stress and burnout.

Even though individuals do not bear the full responsibility for stressful work places, the individuals` ability and skills will soon determine whether the stress becomes chronic and leads to burnout for the particular ones.

In the study staff at an inpatient unit (research group) went through an eight week course in mindfulness training while the staff at another unit (control group) got a workshop-like training in affect consciousness, both interventions had the same amount of group training/ teaching. In addition the research group members were supposed to do mindfulness practice in between the weekly group meetings. 

Members of both groups have answered questionnaires on health, stress, working environment, treatment environment (therapeutic milieu), mindfulness and quality of life on six time points all together, before and up to twelve months after the intervention.  Sick leave and amount of injuries were registered at four of these time points. Questionnaire about ward atmosphere was meant to be answered of both staff and patients, but we succeeded only to get patient data at one time point Focus-group interviews about the participants` experiences with the interventions are carried out for both groups.

The last intervention was finished January 2010, and the last measurement January 2011. The data from the questionnaires will be statistically analyzed with ANOVA repeated measures to see the course for each group of an eventually change, and eventually differences between the groups.  The two interventions have some qualities in common, but will probably affect different topics of what is measured and thereby possibly give knowledge about what can be useful methods in developing therapeutic skills.