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Cited by 94Mindfulness and Compassion InterventionsHealthcare professionals’ stress and burnoutDigital Mental Health Interventions

Encouraging Mindfulness in Medical House Staff via Smartphone App: A Pilot Study

Wen, Louise, Sweeney, Timothy E., Welton, Lindsay, Trockel, Mickey, Katznelson, Laurence·2017·Academic Psychiatry
DOI 10.1007/s40596-017-0768-3
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Abstract

Background Stress and burnout are increasingly recognized as urgent issues among resident physicians, especially given the concerning implications of burnout on physician well-being and patient care outcomes.Objective The authors assessed how a mindfulness and meditation practice among residents, supported via a self-guided, smartphone-based mindfulness app, affects wellness as measured by prevalidated surveys.Methods Residents in the departments of general surgery, anesthesia, and obstetrics and gynecology were recruited for participation in this survey-based, four-week, single-arm study. All participants used the app (Headspace) on a self-guided basis, and took surveys at enrollment, at 2 weeks, and at 4 weeks. The Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS) assessed mood, and the Freiburg Mindfulness Inventory (FMI) measured mindfulness.Results Forty-three residents enrolled in this study from April 2015 to August 2016; 30 residents (90% female) completed two or more surveys, and so were included for further analysis. In a comparison of baseline scores to week four scores, there was a significant increase in FMI at week four (36.88 ± 7.00; Cohen's d = 0.77, p = 0.005), a trend toward increase in the positive affect score (PAS) (31.73 ± 6.07; Cohen's d = 0.38, p = 0.08), and no change in negative affect score (NAS) (21.62 ± 7.85; Cohen's d = -0.15, p = NS). In mixed-effect multivariate modeling, both the PAS and the FMI scores showed significant positive change with increasing use of the smartphone app (PAS, 0.31 (95% CI 0.03-0.57); FMI, 0.38 (95% CI 0.11-0.66)), while the NAS did not show significant change.Conclusions Study limitations include self-guided app usage, a homogenous study subject population, insufficient study subjects to perform stratified analysis of the impact of specialty on the findings, lack of control group, and possible influence from the Hawthorne effect. This study suggests the feasibility and efficacy of a short mindfulness intervention delivered by a smartphone app to improve mindfulness and associated resident physician wellness parameters.

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  • Mindfulness apps have significant effects on mindfulness, well-being and perceived stress in the general population, healthy employees, burnout-prone categories, and high-stress students.

    “Significant effects of these apps on mindfulness, well-being and perceived stress were found in the general population26,27, in healthy employees28 and categories prone to burnout, i.e., physicians29, or with high levels of stress, i.e., college students30, in particular, medical students31 and pharmacy students32.”

    From Mindfulness-based online intervention increases well-being and decreases stress after Covid-19 lockdown (2022) · cites this paper as [29]

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Authors
Wen, L., Sweeney, T. E., Welton, L., Trockel, M., & Katznelson, L.
Affiliations
Stanford Medicine (US)
Corresponding author
Wen, Louise
ORCID
Venue
Academic Psychiatry
Publisher
Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Published
2017-08-09
Volume
41
Issue
5
Pages
646-650
ISSN
  • 1042-9670 (ISSN-L)
  • 1545-7230
DOI
10.1007/s40596-017-0768-3
OpenAlex
W2742866792
Cited by
94
References
22
Citations by year
2026: 4 · 2025: 3 · 2024: 8 · 2023: 13 · 2022: 15 · 2021: 18 · 2020: 19 · 2019: 10 · 2018: 4
FWCI
11.19
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
closed
Licence
www.springer.com/tdm (unspecified)
Locations
  • Academic Psychiatry (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Mindfulness and Compassion Interventions
  • Health Sciences › Health Professions › General Health Professions › Healthcare professionals’ stress and burnout
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Applied Psychology › Digital Mental Health Interventions
Keywords
mindfulness, mobile application, headspace, medical residents, physician burnout, physician stress, wellness, meditation, positive affect, negative affect, Freiburg Mindfulness Inventory, PANAS, general surgery residents, anesthesiology residents, obstetrics and gynecology residents
MeSH terms
Occupational Stress, Adult, Female, Humans, Internship and Residency, Male, Medical Staff, Hospital, Outcome and Process Assessment, Health Care, Pilot Projects, Meditation, Mobile Applications, Mindfulness

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