Mindfulness-based intervention helps preclinical medical students to contain stress, maintain mindfulness and improve academic success

Abstract

Background Stress among students is on the rise during early medical school and has been implicated in poor academic performance. Several methods are being discussed to efficiently reduce stress, among them mindfulness-based interventions. We therefore set out to assess how stress, mindfulness, and academic performance are connected and if an intervention on mindfulness based stress reduction could alleviate stress among medical students and improve their academic achievements. Methods A non-randomized controlled trial including 143 medical students in their preclinical years was performed in 2019. The students completed two surveys - one in the first, the other in the third term - recording perceived stress and mindfulness via validated scales (PSS-10 and MAAS). In between both, 41 students participated in a voluntary mindfulness-based intervention including six two-hours courses. 86 students served as controls. Scholarly success was assessed via the scores achieved in six exams written during the observation period. Results Stress was inversely related with mindfulness and with the results of the most challenging exam. The intervention on mindfulness based stress reduction helped to contain stress and maintain mindfulness during the observation period and this effect lasted for at least six months beyond completion of the intervention. In contrast, beneficial effects on scholarly success were transient and only detectable at completion of the intervention. Conclusion Our observation of short- and intermediate term effects resulting from six individual interventions on mindfulness based stress reduction is encouraging and calls for alternative strategies to induce long-lasting impacts.

Analysis of the Pedagogical Aspects of Academic Stress Research at University: A Systematic Review

“…The researchers found that if we pay more attention to students, we also eliminate the level of their academic stress. This finding came about from data the authors acquired through an experiment with 143 students of medicine (Lampe and Müller-Hilke, 2021).…”

“…-Partnership Intervention (Turner and Simmons, 2020) based on communication between subjects within the academic environment and co-operation on the goals of student learning; -Stress Management Intervention based on screening endangered students and subsequent planning, organisation and co-operation in order to minimise academic stress (Sultan, Amin and Khan, 2021); and -Mindfulness-based Intervention based on the attention paid to students and observation of students (Lampe and Müller-Hilke, 2021). A question that remains in terms of intervention to minimise academic stress is the use of centres at universities designated for this purpose.…”

Mindfulness practice correlates with reduced exam-induced stress and improved exam performance in preclinical medical students with the “acting with awareness”, “non-judging” and “non-reacting” facets of mindfulness particularly associated with improved exam performance

“…Mindfulness-based interventions have been studied in medical students, with promising results in terms of stress reduction [ 15 ], and improvements in wellbeing [ 16 ]. Likewise, recent evidence has demonstrated that lower perceived stress was associated with greater mindfulness, and that a brief mindfulness intervention in medical training was effective in maintaining lower perceived stress [ 17 ]. Further, a recent systematic review concluded that mindfulness is beneficial for reducing stress in medical students [ 18 ], thereby demonstrating its efficacy for medical students.…”

A look at intercultural sensitivity from the perspective of mindfulness and acceptance of diversity

“…However, it has been shown that people with high levels of mindfulness can easily recognize the judgments they make automatically, make more objective assessments, see reality as it is, and use compassionate language in place of their inner critics (Brown & Ryan, 2003). Mindfulness studies with different variables in different domains such as social life, business, professional life, and academic life has been shown to improve social skills (Manusov et al, 2020), facilitate adaptation and coping (Ghahremanlou et al, 2021), protect psychological satisfaction and physiological health (Hero, 2020), bring success in business and school life (Lampe & Müller-Hilke, 2021;Li, 2022), and increase life satisfaction (Dirzyte et al, 2022). Despite the increasing number of studies addressing the concept of mindfulness within intercultural literature (Zegarac et al, 2014), it should be noted that very few studies have been conducted on this topic.…”