Are Mindfulness and Self-Compassion Associated with Sleep and Resilience in Health Professionals?

Abstract

Objectives: To describe the relationship between trainable qualities (mindfulness and self-compassion), with factors conceptually related to burnout and quality of care (sleep and resilience) in young health professionals and trainees.

Design: Cross-sectional survey.

Setting: Large Midwestern academic health center.

Participants: 213 clinicians and trainees.

Outcome measures: Sleep and resilience were assessed by using the 8-item PROMIS Sleep scale and the 6-item Brief Resilience Scale. Mindfulness and self-compassion were assessed using the 10-item Cognitive and Affective Mindfulness Scale, Revised and the 12-item Self-Compassion Scale. Health was assessed with Patient-Reported Outcomes Measurement Information System (PROMIS) Global Health measures, and stress was assessed with the 10-item Perceived Stress Scale. After examination of descriptive statistics and Pearson correlations, multiple regression analyses were done to determine whether mindfulness and self-compassion were associated with better sleep and resilience.

Results: Respondents had an average age of 28 years; 73% were female. Professions included dieticians (11%), nurses (14%), physicians (38%), social workers (24%), and other (12%). Univariate analyses showed normative values for all variables. Sleep disturbances were significantly and most strongly correlated with perceived stress and poorer health, but also with less mindfulness and self-compassion. Resilience was strongly and significantly correlated with less stress and better mental health, more mindfulness, and more self-compassion.

Conclusions: In these young health professionals and trainees, sleep and resilience are correlated with both mindfulness and self-compassion. Prospective studies are needed to determine whether training to increase mindfulness and self-compassion can improve clinicians' sleep and resilience or whether decreasing sleep disturbances and building resilience improves mindfulness and compassion.

FIG. 1.

Model of the postulated and measured relationships between stress, health, sleep, resilience, self-compassion, and mindfulness and the goals of high-quality care and health outcomes. Training variables are self-compassion and mindfulness. The variables sleep disturbance and resilience are the key intermediary variables tested in this conceptual model. Variables in dashed boxes and italicized text (duty hours and workload; burnout; quality of care and health outcomes) were not tested in the present study but are included as part of a larger conceptual model. Mental health refers to scores on the Patient-Reported Outcomes Measurement Information System (PROMIS) Global Mental Health instrument. Physical health refers to scores on the PROMIS Global Physical Health Instrument. Sleep disturbance refers to scores on the PROMIS Sleep Disturbance instrument. Heavy lines indicate correlations are significant at p<0.01; solid lines indicate correlations are significant at p<0.05. Dashed lines indicate that relationships are postulated but not measured in this study. There are no arrows in this figure because all measured relationships are correlational rather than causational.