Brief Mindfulness Intervention for Emotional Distress, Resilience, and Compassion in Family Physicians During COVID-19: A Pilot Study.

Background And Objective: There are high rates of professional burnout among family physicians and trainees. We undertook this study to investigate whether a brief mindfulness intervention could help manage burnout and improve well-being among family physicians in a residency program.

Methods: A total of 21 family physicians participated in a brief, 8-week mindfulness program. We used a single-sample, pre/post design at a Midwestern family medicine residency program. At two points in time (baseline and postintervention), participants completed an online survey measuring burnout, depression, anxiety, stress, perceived resilience, and compassion. We used linear mixed models to estimate the effect of the intervention on the outcome measures.

Results: Participants had improvements after the 8-week intervention. At postintervention, they had significantly better scores on anxiety (.004), stress (.001), perceived resilience (.001), and compassion (.001). There were no significant changes on the personal accomplishment, emotional exhaustion, and depersonalization subscales of either the abbreviated Maslach Burnout Inventory or the depression subscale of the Depression Anxiety Stress Scales-21.

Conclusion: This brief mindfulness program was associated with significant reduction in the scores of anxiety and stress as well as significant improvement in perceived resilience and compassion scores. Brief mindfulness interventions may be a convenient and effective approach to support and improve health and well-being among family physicians.