Journal of Community Medicine & Health Education
Open Access

Short Communication

Impact of Single-Breath Mindfulness Technique on Physician Burnout and Stress

¹Multi Care Health System Institute, Tacoma, WA, USA

²TheHappyMD, Seattle, WA, USA

*Corresponding Author:

Bethann Mangel Pflugeisen
Multi Care Health System Institute
Mailstop 315-C2-RS, PO Box 5299
Tacoma, WA, 98415-9915, USA
Tel: +1 253-403-3629
Fax: +1 253-403-3629
E-mail: Bethann.Pflugeisen@multicare.org

Received date: April 27, 2016; Accepted date: May 23, 2016; Published date: May 30, 2016

Citation: Pflugeisen BM, Mundell K, Ebersole D, Drummond D, Chen D (2016) Impact of Single-Breath Mindfulness Technique on Physician Burnout and Stress. J Community Med Health 6:430. doi:10.4172/2161-0711.1000430

Copyright: © 2016 Pflugeisen BM, et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Introduction: Stress and burnout among health care providers can have serious repercussions. Mindfulness techniques, particularly when delivered by abbreviated training programs, have been studied for their success in managing symptoms and perceptions of stress and burnout among health care workers serving at the bedside, in clinic, as specialists, and in administration.

Materials and Methods: Our suburban community hospital system introduced an eight week, video-module based, single-breath mindfulness technique training program to a group of 23 physicians with a range of experience (0-38 years; 48% primary care). Repeated measures ANOVA were used to evaluate changes across the study period (baseline, end of study, and 8 weeks post-intervention). Multiple linear regression was used to assess the relationship between burnout/stress measures at baseline and provider sex, age, years in practice, and field of practice (primary care or specialty).

Results: 19 (83%) providers completed the program and 12 (52%) completed assessments at each time point. Significant improvements were observed across the study period in emotional exhaustion (p=0.01), personal accomplishment (p=0.007), and stress (p<0.001). The extent to which providers depersonalize their patients was not significantly impacted (p=0.14). No significant associations were observed between provider characteristics and burnout/stress metrics at baseline. However, at the α=0.10 level, primary care providers reported a significantly lower sense of personal accomplishment (-6.0 points, 95% CI: -12.2, 0.2 points; p=0.08) at baseline.

Conclusions: Symptoms of stress and burnout are equally likely to be observed in providers across discipline, age, sex, and experience. A flexible, easy to use, single-breath based mindfulness program can yield significant improvements for these professionals.

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