Mindfulness, emotional intelligence and occupational burnout in intensive care nurses: A mediating effect model

Abstract

Aim(s) To construct structural equation models to test the mediating role of emotional intelligence in the relationship between mindfulness and occupational burnout. Background Reports assessing the relationships among mindfulness, emotional intelligence and burnout, specifically in ICU nurses, are scarce. Methods This was a descriptive, correlational, cross‐sectional research design with 883 ICU nurses enrolled by convenience sampling from 29 ICUs in seven tertiary hospitals in urban areas of Chengdu, China. Mediation analysis was performed by structural equation modelling. Indirect effects were evaluated through bootstrapping. Results The associations among mindfulness, emotional intelligence, emotional exhaustion, depersonalization and personal accomplishment were all significant (p < .001). In the mediation models, emotional intelligence partially mediates the relationships between mindfulness and emotional exhaustion (indirect effect 0.118, p = .006; direct effect −0.374, p = .010; total effect −0.492, p = .011) and between mindfulness and depersonalization (indirect effect −0.182, p = .006; direct effect −0.452, p = .015; total effect −0.633, p = .018). Emotional intelligence plays a total mediating role between mindfulness and personal accomplishment (indirect effect 0.293, p = .004; direct effect 0.119, p = .053). Conclusions The results suggest that nursing manager could implement mindfulness training to improve occupational burnout in ICU nurses. Implications for Nursing Management Nursing managers could help create a more favourable working environment by providing mindfulness training. Such mindfulness training could help improve nursing quality, reduce errors and ensure patient safety, possibly improving patient prognosis and probably satisfaction.

The Relationship between Mindfulness and Emotional Intelligence as a Protective Factor for Healthcare Professionals: Systematic Review

“…Table 2 gathers the main findings of the reviewed studies related to this review's objective [50][51][52][53][54][55][56][57][58][59].…”

“…The reviewed studies showed a relationship between mindfulness and the ability to regulate one's emotions [52,58], emotional exhaustion [57] and EI [53,59]. The training interventions based on mindfulness have been shown to promote positive emotional balance among the participants [55], as well as emotional awareness [54], emotional acceptance, emotion recognition, identifying one's own emotions, expressive suppression [56] and the reduction of emotional exhaustion [54].…”

Curbing nurses' burnout during COVID‐19: The roles of servant leadership and psychological safety

“…Health care organizations strive to meet increased workload during the COVID‐19 pandemic, which has led to increased job burnout of the nurses. Job burnout, a stress reaction, is identified with three dimensions: emotional exhaustion, cynicism, and professional efficacy (Maslach et al, 1996 ; Xie et al, 2020 ). Emotional exhaustion is the result of resource depletion, and an individual feels the loss of control over what happens in his/her life.…”

The Impact of Mindfulness Training on the Attention to Facial Expressions

“…The improvement on emotional intelligence indicated that mindfulness and emotional intelligence may share similar mechanisms. Previous studies revealed that the level of mindfulness was positively correlated with emotional intelligence 53,54,82,83 . More speci cally, the level of mindfulness could positively predict appraisal and expression of own emotion, regulation of emotion, and utilization of emotion 52,54 .…”