The Effectiveness of Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy on Dysfunctional Career Thoughts in Nursing Students

Background & aim: Nurses constitute the largest group of health care providers and play an important role in the quality of patient care. Career Thoughts is one of the most important factors that play a special role in nursing job performance. The purpose of the present study was to investigate the effectiveness of mindfulness-based Cognitive therapy on dysfunctional career thoughts in nursing students. Methods: The present study was a quasi-experimental design with pretest design with post-test and follow-up with a control group. The population of this study was female nursing students of Kermanshah University of Medical Sciences  for sampling  on the basis of screening acquire that contain 36-person students who were questionnaire score with the highest grade of dysfunctional career thoughts (one a standard deviation higher than the mean of the group), then  The selected individuals were randomly assigned into two groups of 18 test and control groups. The experimental group was received course 8 sessions of 2 hours (weekly one session) and the control group did not receive any training. After completing the sessions, both groups responded to the dysfunctional career thoughts questionnaire (Sampson et al., 1996). After completing educational interventions and collecting statistical data, SPSS software was used to analyze the data in two descriptive and inferential levels. To describe the data, descriptive statistics tables and indicators such as mean, standard deviation, and for inferring from statistical data multivariate covariance analysis were used. Results: The results showed that in the experimental group, there was a significant decrease in dysfunctional career thoughts, decision making confusion, commitment anxiety and external conflict after education as compared to the control group. These results were also maintained during the follow-up phase. This intervention in the post-test phase was 68% on the total score of dysfunctional career thoughts, 39% on decision making confusion, 55% in commitment anxiety and 59% in external conflict and in follow-up, 56% in total score of dysfunctional career thoughts, 35% in decision making confusion, 43% had an effect on commitment anxiety and 46% on external conflict. Conclusion: According to the results of this study,mindfulness-based cognitive therapy is recommended to reduce nursing students ineffective thinking to increase occupational performance and provide higher quality health services to patients.