Background: Nurses returning to school while working, raising families, and maintaining other roles, can experience stress, mood changes and cognition disturbance that negatively impact their academic success.
Objectives: To explore the effect of an online mindfulness meditation intervention with distance nursing students on stress, mood and cognition.
Design: A 24 week descriptive study.
Settings: An 8 week online intervention was offered to all undergraduate and graduate nursing students, of three nursing programs of a middle-sized university in mid-Atlantic US.
Participants: A total of 26 nursing students completed the study.
Methods: An 8 week online, asynchronous mindfulness intervention was provided through the learning management system with a 16 week follow-up.
Outcomes measures: Perceived Stress Scale (PSS), Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS), and Attention Network Test (ANT).
Results: Stress was significantly reduced (F(2,24)=4.163, p=.019). A decreasing trend for anxiety was noted with significant difference between time points (F(1,23)=6.889, p=.015) when practice frequency was weekly to daily. Cognition: ability to shift attention, attention selection, concentration, and accuracy improved.
Conclusion: Findings from this study may illuminate the usefulness of a mindfulness based stress reduction program offered to distance nursing students. Further studies are needed to better demonstrate the effectiveness of the intervention.
Keywords: cognition; distance nursing students; mindfulness; mindfulness meditation; mood; stress.
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