Mindfulness, Compassion, and Self-Compassion Among Health Care Professionals: What's New? A Systematic Review

Abstract

Health care professionals (HCPs) are a population at risk for high levels of burnout and compassion fatigue. The aim of the present systematic review was to give an overview on recent literature about mindfulness and compassion characteristics of HCPs, while exploring the effectiveness of techniques, involving the two aspects, such as MBSR or mindfulness intervention and compassion fatigue-related programs. A search of databases, including PubMed and PsycINFO, was conducted following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Review and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines and the methodological quality for this systematic review was appraised using AMSTAR-2 (A MeaSurement Tool to Assess systematic Reviews-2). The number of articles that met the inclusion criteria was 58 (4 RCTs, 24 studies with pre-post measurements, 12 cross-sectional studies, 11 cohort studies and 7 qualitative studies). MBSR intervention was effective at improving, and maintaining, mindfulness and self-compassion levels and to improve burnout, depression, anxiety, stress. The most frequently employed interventional strategies were mindfulness-related trainings that were effective at improving mindfulness and self-compassion, but not compassion fatigue, levels. Compassion-related interventions have been shown to improve self-compassion, mindfulness and interpersonal conflict levels. Mindfulness was effective at improving negative affect and compassion fatigue, while compassion satisfaction may be related to cultivation of positive affect. This systematic review summarized the evidence regarding mindfulness-and compassion-related qualities of HCPs as well as potential effects of MBSR, mindfulness-related and compassion-related interventions on professionals' psychological variables like mindfulness, self-compassion and quality of life. Combining structured mindfulness and compassion cultivation trainings may enhance the effects of interventions, limit the variability of intervention protocols and improve data comparability of future research.

Self-Oriented Empathy and Compassion Fatigue: The Serial Mediation of Dispositional Mindfulness and Counselor’s Self-Efficacy

“…Finally, the serial mediating roles of mindfulness and counselor’s self-efficacy were found in the present study, which could be supported by previous empirical findings ( Brown et al, 2017 ; Conversano et al, 2020 ). Previous studies found that mindfulness had a negative association with self-oriented empathy, and a moderate, negative association with CF ( Brown et al, 2017 ; Silver et al, 2018 ).…”

“…Previous studies found that mindfulness had a negative association with self-oriented empathy, and a moderate, negative association with CF ( Brown et al, 2017 ; Silver et al, 2018 ). However, studies undertaken so far have provided inconsistent evidence regarding the effectiveness of mindfulness-based interventions on CF ( Duarte and Pinto-Gouveia, 2017a ; Steinberg et al, 2017 ; Wylde et al, 2017 ; Conversano et al, 2020 ). This inconsistency indicates that in addition to mindfulness training, other factors should be added in interventions in order to improve the intervention effectiveness on CF.…”

“…Moreover, mindfulness is effective at decreasing CF ( Conversano et al, 2020 ). Previous studies found that Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) effectively decreased CF ( Duarte and Pinto-Gouveia, 2017a ; Silver et al, 2018 ).…”

Mindfulness, Age and Gender as Protective Factors Against Psychological Distress During COVID-19 Pandemic

“…To date, this mindfulness ability seems to be related to other psychological constructs such as emotional intelligence, vivid perception, receptive attention, personality traits, and defense mechanisms (Salovey et al, 1995;Costa and McCrae, 2008;Marazziti et al, 2015;Di Giuseppe et al, 2019a). Mindfulness has also been proven to represent a good predictor of depression, anxiety, stress, and well-being in association with self-compassion, selfefficacy, and gender (Soysa and Wilcomb, 2015;Conversano et al, 2020a). Dispositional mindfulness has the potential to be used as treatment for stress-related and other mental health disorders (Baer, 2003;Chang et al, 2004) and is effective in the enhancement of immune function (Davidson et al, 2003) and self-regulation, through the training of attention control, emotion regulation, and self-awareness (Tang et al, 2015;Geng et al, 2019).…”

Dispositional Optimism and Context Sensitivity: Psychological Contributors to Frailty Status Among Elderly Outpatients

“…Consistently, several studies have shown that the maintenance of a healthy psychological state can be beneficial for reducing distress not only among subjects with psychopathological problems ( Marchetti et al, 2019 ; Rosa et al, 2019 ; Vicario et al, 2019 ) but also among patients with chronic medical conditions ( Di Giuseppe et al, 2018 , 2019 , 2020 ; Quattropani et al, 2018b ; Martino et al, 2020a ). Similarly, several studies have recently highlighted the importance of clinical psychological features in handling the consequences of age-related medical conditions for both patients ( Quattropani et al, 2018a ; Catalano et al, 2019 , 2020 ; Kelly et al, 2019 ; Marchi et al, 2019 ; Martino et al, 2020c ) and health professionals ( Quattropani et al, 2017 ; Conversano et al, 2020 ).…”