Abstract
Nurses continually give of themselves at work, as well as outside of work. This results in extensive stress, physiological distress, and ultimately burnout for individuals in the nursing profession. Nurses that work in high-stress environments, such as critical care, pediatrics, and oncology, are at a significantly increased risk of manifesting physical and psychological symptoms of burnout syndrome, compassion fatigue, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Many of these factors are leading to nurses leaving the profession prematurely, resulting in significantly high turnover rates. High burnout and turnover rates of nurses result in the lack of adequate nursing staff in hospitals, which in turn results in the inadequate ability to provide safe and effective care to patients. Resilience is a topic that has gained much discussion in recent years surrounding the significant burdens nurses are experiencing. Nurses with resilience exhibit a heightened awareness, internal stability, and flexibility that allow them to navigate high-stress situations. The goal of resilience training and education is to enable nurses to respond to clinically challenging situations in ways that will protect them against detrimental consequences. Mindfulness based stress reduction (MBSR) has gained significant headway in recent years as a valuable, evidence based intervention to increase resiliency in nurses, improve job satisfaction, and reduce burnout. The purpose of this quality improvement project was to implement a MBSR course for nursing staff to improve nurse resiliency in a mid-western freestanding Children's hospital. This project examined nurse resiliency pre-intervention, and post-intervention utilizing the Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale, as well as compassion fatigue, compassion satisfaction, burnout, and secondary traumatic stress pre-intervention, and post-intervention using the Professional Quality of Life scale. Results of the project indicate that resilience scores improved, at a statistically significant level, from pre-intervention to post-intervention.