A Pilot Online Mindfulness Intervention to Decrease Caregiver Burden and Improve Psychological Well-Being.

Interventions to reduce caregiver burden are of great interest as the number of informal family caregivers continues to grow. The purpose of this study was to test the feasibility of an online mindfulness meditation intervention for community-dwelling older adult caregivers and to evaluate its impact on quality of life, caregiver burden, and psychological well-being. A total of 40 caregivers were recruited from 2 community center support groups to participate in an 8-week online mindfulness intervention.

Scope-of-practice laws for nurse practitioners limit cost savings that can be achieved in retail clinics.

Retail clinics have the potential to reduce health spending by offering convenient, low-cost access to basic health care services. Retail clinics are often staffed by nurse practitioners (NPs), whose services are regulated by state scope-of-practice regulations. By limiting NPs' work scope, restrictive regulations could affect possible cost savings.

The Impact of an Innovative Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Program on the Health and Well-Being of Nurses Employed in a Corporate Setting.

This study implemented an innovative new model of delivering a Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) program that replaces six of the eight traditional in-person sessions with group telephonic sessions (tMBSR) and measured the program's impact on the health and well-being of nurses employed within a large health care organization. As part of a nonrandomized pre-post intervention study, 36 nurses completed measures of health, stress, burnout, self-compassion, serenity, and empathy at three points in time. Between baseline (Time 1) and the end of the 8-week tMBSR intervention (Time 2), participants showed improvement in general health, t(37) = 2.

Electronic health records in four community physician practices: impact on quality and cost of care.

Objective: To assess the impact of the electronic health record (EHR) on cost (i.e., payments to providers) and process measures of quality of care.