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Wellbeing, burnout, and safe practice among healthcare professionals: predictive influences of mindfulness, values, and self-compassion

Prudenzi, A., Graham, C. D., Flaxman, P. ORCID: 0000-0002-6417-2499 & O’Connor, D. (2022). Wellbeing, burnout, and safe practice among healthcare professionals: predictive influences of mindfulness, values, and self-compassion. Psychology, Health & Medicine, 27(5), pp. 1130-1143. doi: 10.1080/13548506.2021.1898651

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.

Publication Type: Article
Additional Information: © 2021 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Publisher Keywords: wellbeing, burnout, patient safety, mindfulness, values, self-compassion, worry and rumination
Subjects: B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BF Psychology
H Social Sciences > HD Industries. Land use. Labor > HD28 Management. Industrial Management
R Medicine > RA Public aspects of medicine > RA0421 Public health. Hygiene. Preventive Medicine
R Medicine > RC Internal medicine > RC0321 Neuroscience. Biological psychiatry. Neuropsychiatry
R Medicine > RT Nursing
Departments: School of Health & Psychological Sciences > Psychology
SWORD Depositor:
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