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Quantitative Appraisal and Synopsis

Health is the status of wellbeing physically and mentally. A healthy life is the building block to a happy life. Health consists of two aspects which include physical health and mental health. Generally, mental health deals with the psychological wellbeing and could incorporate emotions, stress levels, fatigue, and tiredness. Good mental health means that one is at peace in the mind and is fit to face daily life challenges by adapting, coping up, or finding logical solutions in good time. One of the primary determinants of good mental health is stress. A high stress level is associated with low levels of mental health. Stress is a characteristic feature of the nursing profession because nurses have to deal with the pains of others. Nurses providing psychiatric care face greater levels of stress because of the nature of their job. Mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) promotes stress reduction among various people with pain. The purpose of this paper is to determine the usefulness the MBSR in reducing stress levels in psychiatric nurses.

Study Synopsis

Research Design and Setting

This study was conducted in Hunan Province in China from August to November 2017. Participants were collected from there hospitals from the province, including The First Xiangya Hospital of Central South University, The Second Xiangya Hospital of Central South University, and The Fourth Xiangya Hospital of Central South University. The study was conducted in Xiangya Hospital of Central South University. An experimental quantitative study design was used to collect and analyze data (Yang, Tang, & Zhou, 2018). Data collection involved dividing participants into intervention and control groups. The researchers used SPSS 15.0 statistical to analyze the data collected and t-test used for comparative analysis.

Study Sample

Participants were recruited from the three identified university hospitals from Hunan, China. The criteria for selection included nurses who had worked in the hospitals for more than one year and were nurses in the psychiatric departments. This means that those eligible for selection aged 20-50 years old. Another inclusion criterion involves the nurses’ health where those with physical diseases such as serious cardiovascular illness were excluded from the study (Yang, Tang, & Zhou, 2018). At the beginning, a total of 289 respondents were identified and screened using Symptom Checklist-90 (SCL-90). At the end, 100 volunteers met the selection criteria and participated in the study.

How the study was conducted

After recruiting the 100 psychiatric nurse participants, they were grouped randomly into two equal groups. The intervention and control groups each had 50 participants. The intervention group would undergo the MBSR program while the control group did not. The idea was to determine the effects this program would have on the mental wellbeing of the nurses. Two psychological consultants assisted by measuring the stress levels, anxiety levels, depression levels, and symptoms using Self-Rating Depression Scale (SDS), Self-Rating Anxiety Scale (SAS), Nursing Stress Scale, and the SCL-90 scale (Yang, Tang, & Zhou, 2018). The study process began by all the participant undergoing initial assessments using these instruments. Thereafter, the intervention group underwent the MBSR therapy while the control group received the control group received the hospitals’ routine psychological support.

After the intervention period which was from September to October of 2017, all the participants underwent assessment using the study instruments again and results analyzed and compared to the initial ones before the intervention. Intervention program involved once a week training which occurred on Thursdays for eight weeks. The whole study process occurred from August to November 2017 and was conducted in three phases, including assessment, implementation, and completion.

Article Appraisal

Mindfulness therapy involves enhancing physical awareness, meditations, and yoga. It helps people to develop and enhance inner focus and self-regulation with the aim of reducing stress, pain, and treating various diseases. MBSR is a specific program that helps in reducing stress levels in various populations. So far, study evidence indicates that MBSR is effective in treating chronic diseases and emotional disorders. Khoury et al. (2013) also found that the therapy effectively reduce stress levels among individuals. It is also effective among the healthy young and middle-age individual with different kinds of stress (Goldberg, Knoeppel, Davidson, & Flook, 2019). However, there is a knowledge gap in the effectiveness of this method in reducing stress levels and promoting mental health of psychiatric nurses. This study addresses this gap.

The sampling method used in this study was appropriate in sufficiently addressing the research issue. This is because it used a relatively large sample size of 100 psychiatric nurses. The participants were then divided equally and randomly into control and intervention groups. During participant recruitment, the researchers used criteria such as the minimum experience of one year, age of 20-50 years, and underlying diseases, to control extraneous variables (Yang, Tang, & Zhou, 2018). This process helped to minimize factors that would interfere with the findings.

The instruments used were SCL-90, SDS, SAS, and the Nursing Stress Scale. The instruments were valid and reliable because they measured the exactly what they claimed to measure and the results were consistent. This research process also involved intervention for an eight-week period. The intervention process were organized well in stages, and set for Thursday of every week. The training content was consistent. Consistency ensured that the results obtained were due to the intervention and could be traced back to the whole process. In a healthcare research of this importance, consistency and accuracy of results is important.

Study Conclusion

The researchers concluded that MBSR therapy help in reducing psychiatric nurses’ work stress, as well as increasing their mental health. This conclusion was supported by the results that indicated that before the interventions. The nurses did not show significant variations in stress levels, depression levels, anxiety, and mental health status (Yang, Tang, & Zhou, 2018). The MBSR therapy intervention was then implemented for eight weeks after which the measurements were taken again. This time, the intervention group had significantly better scores on mental health and stress levels than the members of the control group who did not receive the MBSR therapy. This means that the conclusion made was from the study findings.

Study Limitation

The authors identify the study limitations which lies on sampling method adopted and other factors that influence the experiment. However, the explanations are not sufficient enough because they cannot indicate the specific change required on the sampling method or even the other factors that need to be explored.

Conclusion

This study was successful in addressing the identified problem. First, the purpose was identified at the beginning and a logical and chronological process followed until the conclusion stage. The study has nursing implications because it can help to promote productivity and general life of psychiatric nurses by reducing their stress levels and increasing mental health. This group of nurses face high stress levels because their provide care to mentally ill patients. They, therefore, need more effective psychological support systems and MBSR is one of them.