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. 2020 Apr 6;20(1):104.
doi: 10.1186/s12909-020-02015-6.

Determining the feasibility and effectiveness of brief online mindfulness training for rural medical students: a pilot study

Sarah Moore  1 , Rita Barbour  2 , Hanh Ngo  3 , Craig Sinclair  4 , Richard Chambers  5 , Kirsten Auret  6 , Craig Hassed  7 , Denese Playford  3
Affiliations

Determining the feasibility and effectiveness of brief online mindfulness training for rural medical students: a pilot study

Sarah Moore et al. BMC Med Educ. .

Abstract

Background: We sought to determine the feasibility and effectiveness of a mindfulness training program, delivered online to medical students at a Rural Clinical School.

Methods: An 8-week online training program was delivered to penultimate-year medical students at an Australian Rural Clinical School during 2016. Using a mixed methods approach, we measured the frequency and duration of participants' mindfulness meditation practice, and assessed changes in their perceived stress, self-compassion and compassion levels, as well as personal and professional attitudes and behaviours.

Results: Forty-seven participants were recruited to the study. 50% of participants were practising mindfulness meditation at least weekly by the end of the 8-week program, and 32% reported practising at least weekly 4 months following completion of the intervention. There was a statistically significant reduction in participants' perceived stress levels and a significant increase in self-compassion at 4-month follow-up. Participants reported insights about the personal and professional impact of mindfulness meditation training as well as barriers to practice.

Conclusions: The results provide preliminary evidence that online training in mindfulness meditation can be associated with reduced stress and increased self-compassion in rural medical students. More rigorous research is required to establish concrete measures of feasibility of a mindfulness meditation program.

Keywords: Online mindfulness training; Rural medical education; Self-compassion; Stress management.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
a Boxplots of weekly prescribed mindfulness meditation practice – Total number of days. b Boxplots of weekly mindfulness meditation practice – Total duration estimated in minutes. Note: As seen in Additional file 2, original data collected on duration of mindfulness practice were in ‘units of time’ not necessarily of equal intervals. To give these ‘time-units’ a more practical meaning, we approximated (or replaced) them with their mid-point values in minutes (i.e., 8 minutes for category 2 (between 5 and 10); 15 minutes for category 3 (10-20 minutes); and 25 minutes for category 4 (20-30 minutes). Category 1 (0-5 minutes) was ascribed with a value of 5 minutes if the participant had indicated that they practiced MM on that particular day, as we inferred that the students would have practiced MM for 5 minutes as per the prescribed exercise, rather than for 3 minutes (i.e., the mid-point value). Category 5 (>30 minutes) was conservatively ascribed with 45-minute duration
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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