The effect of mindfulness interventions on stress in medical students: A systematic review and meta-analysis

Edie L Sperling, Jennifer M Hulett, LeeAnne B Sherwin, Sarah Thompson and B Ann Bettencourt

PLOS ONE, 2023, vol. 18, issue 10, 1-24

Abstract: Background: Medical students have high levels of stress, which is associated with higher incidents of burnout, depression, and suicide compared to age-matched peers. Mindfulness practices have been shown to reduce stress among medical students. Purpose: The purpose of this systematic review and meta-analysis was to examine if mindfulness interventions have an overall effect on stress outcomes in the high-stress population of medical students globally, particularly given the wide variety of interventions. Any intervention designed to promote mindfulness was included. Methods: A comprehensive literature search was completed to include multiple databases, ancestry, and hand-searching and 35 studies were included. Standardized mean difference effect sizes (ES) were synthesized across studies using a random-effects model for changes in stress levels in medical students ≥ 18. Moderator analyses were performed to explore variations in effects by participant and intervention characteristics. Results: Mindfulness interventions significantly improved stress among medical students in both the two-arm studies (d = 0.370, k = 19, n = 2,199, 95% CI 0.239–0.501, p

Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0286387 (text/html)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id= ... 86387&type=printable (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:plo:pone00:0286387

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0286387

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in PLOS ONE from Public Library of Science
Bibliographic data for series maintained by plosone ().