Impact of a Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction Intervention on the Emotional Intelligence, Burnout and Anticipated Turnover Among Critical Care Nurses

Background: Burnout and turnover is a significant problem within critical care. Due to the various outcomes of burnout and turnover, including their impact on the quality of patient care, it is imperative to consider strategies to reduce burnout and turnover of critical care nurses.

Research objective: To determine the effectiveness of a mindfulness-based stress reduction intervention on the emotional intelligence, burnout inventory scores, and anticipated turnover among a group of critical care nurses.

Research design: This study used a pre-experimental, pre- and post-test design. Participants and research context: A total of 32 intensive care nurses were selected from a large tertiary care facility in West TN. Data collection instruments were a “demographics questionnaire”, “Genos Concise Emotional Intelligence Inventory”, Maslach Burnout Inventory[1], and the “Anticipated Turnover Scale”.

Ethical Considerations: Informed consent from participants and research approval was granted by the Old Dominion University Institutional Review Board.

Findings: Findings showed that nurses had moderate levels of burnout an anticipated turnover. Results revealed that participation in the mindfulness-based stress reduction intervention was associated with an increase in emotional intelligence and decreases in both burnout and anticipated turnover.

Discussion: Many findings in this study are consistent with those of other, similar studies.

Conclusions: An overall decrease in post-intervention burnout and anticipated turnover substantiates the use of mindfulness as a useful retention strategy.

Keywords: Mindfulness; Emotional intelligence; Burnout; Turnover