| Title |
Encouraging Mindfulness in Medical House Staff via Smartphone App: A Pilot Study
|
|---|---|
| Published in |
Academic Psychiatry, August 2017
|
| DOI | 10.1007/s40596-017-0768-3 |
| Pubmed ID | |
| Authors |
Louise Wen, Timothy E. Sweeney, Lindsay Welton, Mickey Trockel, Laurence Katznelson |
| Abstract |
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. 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. 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. 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. 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. |
X Demographics
The data shown below were collected from the profiles of 6 X users who shared this research output. Click here to find out more about how the information was compiled.
Geographical breakdown
| Country | Count | As % |
|---|---|---|
| United States | 2 | 33% |
| Italy | 1 | 17% |
| Cameroon | 1 | 17% |
| Switzerland | 1 | 17% |
| France | 1 | 17% |
Demographic breakdown
| Type | Count | As % |
|---|---|---|
| Members of the public | 5 | 83% |
| Scientists | 1 | 17% |
Mendeley readers
The data shown below were compiled from readership statistics for 252 Mendeley readers of this research output. Click here to see the associated Mendeley record.
Geographical breakdown
| Country | Count | As % |
|---|---|---|
| Unknown | 252 | 100% |
Demographic breakdown
| Readers by professional status | Count | As % |
|---|---|---|
| Student > Master | 40 | 16% |
| Student > Bachelor | 29 | 12% |
| Researcher | 26 | 10% |
| Student > Doctoral Student | 23 | 9% |
| Student > Ph. D. Student | 20 | 8% |
| Other | 45 | 18% |
| Unknown | 69 | 27% |
| Readers by discipline | Count | As % |
|---|---|---|
| Psychology | 50 | 20% |
| Medicine and Dentistry | 50 | 20% |
| Social Sciences | 21 | 8% |
| Nursing and Health Professions | 19 | 8% |
| Computer Science | 6 | 2% |
| Other | 21 | 8% |
| Unknown | 85 | 34% |
Attention Score in Context
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 21. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 14 May 2018.
All research outputs
#1,702,397
of 24,717,821 outputs
Outputs from Academic Psychiatry
#64
of 1,505 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#33,309
of 322,443 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Academic Psychiatry
#4
of 40 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 24,717,821 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done particularly well and is in the 93rd percentile: it's in the top 10% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 1,505 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a little more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 5.0. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 95% of its peers.
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We're also able to compare this research output to 40 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 92% of its contemporaries.