Building resilience and reducing burnout in aged care staff: implementation of a mindfulness program

Background and aims

The aged care sector faces workforce shortages, with increased needs for personalised high-quality care. Retention of frontline staff is a key concern for aged care services. Staff in the sector experience high levels of burnout due to personal, interpersonal and workplace stressors. Burnout is associated with staff exiting the workforce and can lead to poorer quality of care and lower staff productivity. Teaching staff skills in self-efficacy and self-care has been found to reduce staff burnout. This project aimed to implement an on-line eight-week mindfulness and yoga program (Mindfulness in Motion [MIM] Program) to enhance staff wellbeing and retention.

What we did

This project used a three-step co-design implementation approach. Step 1 focused on building capacity in a group of champions (Mindfulness Action Group [MAG]) at an aged care organisation to deliver the MIM program. Step 2 centred on the development of a co-designed implementation strategy in collaboration with the MAG for the roll out of the MIM program. Step 3 focused on the delivery of the MIM program by MAG members in alignment with an implementation plan. Pre and post-test survey data was collected to investigate intervention effectiveness on staff outcomes (burnout, stress, work engagement, resilience) and interview data was collected to explore implementation factors that impacted on delivery and uptake of the program.  

Outcomes

While 16 aged care staff participated the MIM program, complete pre-post data sets were collected from only nine participants. Paired t-tests showed a reduction in perceived stress of staff and in those who met burnout criteria. Significant increases in work engagement and resilience were also found. While the data does suggest that the MIM program has potential to positively impact staff wellbeing a range of implementation factors hampered participant recruitment into the MIM program. Interview data revealed three themes that impacted the feasibility of implementation - workforce pressures, short lead in (pre-implementation) time and lack of middle management engagement.

Impact on Aged Care and Workforce

Programs that focus on mindfulness-based interventions which include meditation and yoga principles could provide much needed resources for aged care staff to combat burnout and work-related stress. However, to successfully implement such programs organisational readiness for change needs to be closely assessed. Aged care services need significant pre-implementation time and effort to ensure that such programs are socialised and understood by frontline staff as innovations that can assist them in their work practices and productivity.

Next Steps

The project team will continue to work with our partner organisation to support future iterations of the MIM program or other similar programs which could be further developed in quality improvement activities to promote staff wellbeing.