Implementing Mindfulness Meditation to Reduce Nurse Burnout

Abstract There will be an estimated shortage of 100,000 nurses by the year 2022, with 500,000 seasoned nurses retiring. The nursing profession has recently experienced a devastating pandemic that left no time to combat the detrimental effects of burnout, specifically for intensive care nurses, who are the frontline workers of a physically and psychologically draining working environment conducive to burnout. Nurses experience burnout for a mixture of reasons, but mainly it is due to the lack of interventions to help them combat the disease. Mindfulness meditation represents an interventional tool that has been shown to reduce the negative stressors associated with burnout and decrease the effects of outside factors that lead to burnout. Mindfulness meditation can be a valuable tool to help intensive care nurses recognize and decrease their burnout. The purpose of this project was to educate intensive care nurses on burnout, identify and understand their areas of burnout through a survey, and offer a tool they can use to combat this never-ending problem. Results showed emotional scores improved from 29.87 to 19.55, depersonalization scores improved from 11.35 to 8.16, and personal accomplishment scores improved from 31.55 to 36.52. With the results showing a decrease in all three components of burnout, it is evident that the intervention was successful, and mindful meditation should be used to combat burnout in more medical establishments. Keywords: nurse, burnout, nurse burnout, mindfulness meditatio