Rationale: Physical and occupational therapy students experience tremendous levels of academic stress and anxiety, and occupational therapy students have poor sleep patterns, which could impact their academic performance.
Objectives: The purpose of this poster is to report the effectiveness of a new interprofessional multimodal virtual mindfulness intervention in improving self-compassion, anxiety, depression, and sleep hygiene in occupational and physical therapy graduate students.
Methods: Thirteen occupational and physical therapy students participated in this quantitative within-subjects study for 8 weekly synchronous mindfulness sessions over Zoom Pro. Data were collected via the Perceived Stress Scale, Self-Compassion Scale (SCS), and Promis Anxiety, Depression, and Sleep Disturbance Short Forms.
Results: There was a statistically significant decrease in participant stress levels at the end of the intervention (n = 13, p = .028) and a significant increase in the Isolation subset on the SCS (n = 13, p = .003). There were no statistically significant improvements in the other variables.
Conclusion: Results indicate that students still reported the same levels of fear, anxiety, tenseness, and worry but increased their internal locus of control and felt more confident and able to cope and manage these feelings as a result of this virtual intervention. This study showed that an interprofessional virtual mindfulness intervention can be used to decreases perceived levels of stress in occupational and physical therapy students by providing didactic psychoeducation on best-practices and experiential learning of different mindfulness practices, which can also be used with their clients.