Efficacy and feasibility of the minimal therapist-guided four-week online audio-based mindfulness program ‘Mindful Senses’ for burnout and stress reduction in medical personnel: A randomized controlled trial

Abstract

Background Previous online mindfulness-based interventions (MBI) for burnout and stress reduction in medical personnel suffered from limited effect size and high dropout rate. The results were equivocal across studies with several limitations in their study designs. Therefore, we developed an online MBI entitled “Mindful Senses (MS)”, a minimally therapist-guided online audio-based mindfulness program, with aims to increase the effect size and lower dropout rate and tested its efficacy and feasibility with randomized active-controlled study design. Methods We recruited online 90 medical personnel who had moderate or high levels of burnout and stress from across Thailand. Participants were randomly allocated into Group A and B equally. Group A read four weekly Psychological Self-Help Articles (PSA) and attended the MS program during weeks 1-4. Group B read PSA during weeks 1-4 and attended MS program during week 9-12. Outcomes including burnout, stress, depression, anxiety, mindfulness, and quality of life (QOL) were measured at baseline (T0), week 4 (T1), and week 8 (T2) for both groups. Group X time interaction was analyzed by repeated-measures ANOVA. Results MS + PSA had significantly better improvement than PSA only in burnout, stress, anxiety, depression, mindfulness, and QOL, with medium-to-very large effect sizes (d = 1.33, 1.42, 1.04, 1.14, 0.70, and 1.03, respectively) at T1. The outcome differences remained at T2 with medium-to-large effect sizes (d = 0.84, 0.98, 0.73, 0.73, 0.66, and 0.94, respectively). The dropout rate was 4.4%. Conclusions MS program is an online MBI that reduced burnout and stress in medical personnel with a large effect size and low dropout rate. Its effects remained at one-month follow-up. The MS program is feasible and has a potential to be an alternative intervention for medical personnel suffering from burnout and stress.