Overarching Themes | Interpretative Themes | Participant quotes |
---|---|---|
Perceptions of what mindfulness is | Mindfulness is about self-care | Mindfulness is about inner peace and looking after your mental health |
Mindfulness is a way of unwinding and going to a better place | ||
Mindfulness is to reduce stress | ||
Being mindful of others | You have to look after yourself to look after others | |
I think mindfulness means to be open without judgement. To be empathetic towards others and how your words and actions can help or hinder others | ||
Enhanced awareness | Mindfulness is being aware of your thoughts and feelings in response to external influencing factors | |
Being aware of what is going on at the present moment, being present and not hooked up in the past or future | ||
Taking time to be at peace with your thoughts and emotions | ||
Previous Mindfulness Practice experiences | Helped to relax | Mindfulness helped to relax my mind and provide peace |
I loved meditation as it helped me focus on that moment on my breathing and sensations throughout my body, so I was distracted from everything else | ||
Mindfulness does help before I go to sleep | ||
Enhanced mental well-being | Mindfulness alleviated stress and made me happier | |
Mindfulness removed some worrisome thoughts from my head, validated my feelings and allowed me time to focus on more important things | ||
Mindfulness helped me to stop being so anxious and to stop worrying about the future so much | ||
Previous mindfulness practice not beneficial | I didn’t stick at mindfulness long enough to see any sort of development | |
Mindfulness didn’t help, it made me more stressed and I just didn’t get it | ||
I found mindfulness a waste of time | ||
Impact of mindfulness in nursing | Benefits to students undertaking the undergraduate nursing programme | Help you to keep the stress of the nursing course and profession overall down, as it is a demanding full-time course, and if you don’t practice mindfulness etc. your mental health could become worse due to these stresses |
Mindfulness would be a good way to relieve stress and understand the thoughts that are going through your head as well as better equip students for life after university | ||
Benefits to future clinical practice | Mindfulness will help me appreciate my skills and assure me that I am a good nurse | |
Mindfulness would allow me to recognise the signs of burnout and mental fatigue, both in myself and other people, and give me the right tools to help combat negative feelings | ||
Mindfulness would help me to cope with the pressure of clinical practice and increase compassion and communication skills | ||
Barriers to mindfulness in undergraduate nursing programme | I don’t personally believe in mindfulness | |
The previous time I tried a mindfulness class actually stressed me out more as doing nothing made me feel lazy | ||
Timing is a barrier of course. For example, if it would interfere with study for exams or completing assignments | ||
Time constraints and stress | ||
The need for a future well-being initiative for undergraduate nursing students | Nursing course is stressful | This course is very demanding and experiences on placement can have a major impact on nursing students |
The pressure and workload of the course can become overwhelming, especially around the end of the year. A well-being initiative would be useful to help student nurses cope with stress and learn how to balance university, placement and home commitments. | ||
Student forgotten | The course is often focussed solely on the patient therefore the professional, or even the student, I personally feel are not regarded. | |
Sometimes the student’s well-being can be forgotten about, it’s important that they are well in order to attend university and complete certain tasks given to them. | ||
Take care of the students so they can take care of others | Taking care of our [the student] health and wellbeing first and foremost so we can help others | |
A well-being initiative would help teach future self-care methods for our nursing career | ||
Future well-being initiative should not be mandatory | A future well-being initiative should be available but maybe not mandatory | |
A well-being initiative could benefit some students, but it may not because missing a session can lead to more stress. The curriculum is already full time and it would be difficult to add more to it. |