Title: Implementation of a mindfulness and yoga program for aged care staff: Successes and challenges
Abstract:
Background: 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 aged care 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 in other health sectors.
Aim: To implement an on-line eight-week mindfulness and yoga program (Mindfulness in Motion [MIM] Program) to enhance staff wellbeing and retention.
Methods: 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. Step 3 focused on the delivery of the MIM program by MAG members. 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.
Results: Sixteen aged care staff participated in the MIM program, well short of the target of 70. Pre-post data sets were completed by only nine participants. Paired t-tests (n=9) showed a reduction in perceived stress of staff and in those who met burnout criteria. Significant increases in work engagement (p=0.0169) and resilience (p=0.0221) 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. Participant interview data (n=7) revealed three themes that impacted the feasibility of implementation - workforce pressures, short lead in (pre-implementation) time and lack of middle management engagement.
Discussion: Organisational readiness for change in the aged care setting is critically impacted by contextual system barriers that are extremely difficult to mitigate. Changes to the funding requirements for implementation projects in aged care, increasing the length of project timelines and having a more robust understanding of how contextual factors impact staff behaviours (especially the motivational component of behaviour) to engage with research are needed if implementation efforts aimed at improving staff wellbeing are to succeed.
