Positive Health Online

Abstract

DESAI and COLLEAGUES,  (1)Department of Internal Medicine, Boonshoft School of Medicine, Wright State University, Dayton, Ohio, United States of America; (2)Nurse Scientist- Premier Health Nursing Research, Miami Valley Hospital, Dayton, Ohio, United States of America; (3)Premier Health Learning Institute, Dayton, Ohio, United States of America studied whether Heartfulness meditation practice, compared to Gratitude practice, leads to measurable changes in mental wellbeing among healthcare providers across the US.

Background

To investigate whether Heartfulness meditation practice, compared to Gratitude practice, leads to measurable changes in mental wellbeing among healthcare providers across the US.

Methodology

Participants were randomly assigned to one of the following 6-week interventions: the trainer-guided virtual Heartfulness meditation program or the podcast-based self-guided gratitude practice group. The Professional Quality of Life Scale-5 (ProQOL-5) was used to determine Compassion Satisfaction (CS) and risk for Burnout (BO) and secondary traumatic stress (STS). The Utrecht Work Engagement Scale (UWES) was used to assess vigour, dedication, and absorption at work. Outcomes were collected at baseline and the end of the study period. Qualitative questions regarding the experience of learning and practicing were also offered at the end of the six weeks.

Results

The majority of participants were nurses (50%), followed by allied healthcare professionals (37%) and physicians (13%) (N = 83). There was a general trend towards increases in CS in the Heartfulness group compared to the gratitude group. However, this was not statistically significant. Strong evidence suggests there was a significant improvement in BO for the Heartfulness group between Week 0 and Week 6 (p = 0.002), as well as STS (p = 0.0004) and vigour (p = 0.0392). Qualitative data analysis revealed that the subjects in the Heartfulness arm reported improved sleep and decreased reactivity to stress. Subjects in the gratitude arm reported improved mood and favourable results using gratitude practices at home with family members.

Conclusion

In our study, Heartfulness meditation practice was associated with a significant improvement in burnout and vigour at work, with a trend towards compassion satisfaction after six weeks compared with gratitude practices. Qualitative analysis indicates the benefits of both Heartfulness and Gratitude practices. Further randomized trials with a larger sample size are needed to explore these science-based practices for the wellbeing of healthcare workers. Copyright: © 2024 Desai 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. Conflict of interest statement: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

References

Desai K(1), O'Malley P(2), Van Culin E(3). Impact of heartfulness meditation practice compared to the gratitude practices on wellbeing and work engagement among healthcare professionals: Randomized trial. PLoS One. Jun 7 2024 ;19(6):e0304093. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0304093. eCollection 2024.