Date of Award

4-24-2019

Degree Type

Evidence-Based Project Report

Degree Name

Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP)

Department

Nursing

First Advisor

Julie M. Brandy

Abstract

According to the American College Health Association (ACHA) (2017), in a survey of 31,463 students, 31.7% stated that stress negatively impacts their academic performance (lower grades, dropped course, etc.). Additionally, 45.1% of the students stated they have more than average stress levels. The purpose of this evidence-based practice (EBP) project was to determine if mindfulness meditation was effective in helping college students cope with stress. Based on current evidence, Jon Kabat-Zinn’s online application for mindfulness meditation is supported as an effective way to help college students cope with stress (Regehr et al. 2013; Yusufov et al. 2018; Cavanagh et al. 2013; Greeson et al., 2014). The ACE Star Model of Knowledge Transformation was utilized to help guide this EBP project at a midwestern university. The project manager recruited participants by explaining the project details before one of their class sessions. Participants of this project included 29 undergraduate students. Participants were asked to complete weekly meditation exercises utilizing the online mobile application for eight weeks. In each exercise, the meditation track involves a male voice instructing the individual on how to breathe and what to focus on throughout the meditation. In order to determine if this intervention helped college students cope with stress, baseline and outcome data were measured utilizing the Perceived Stress Scale (PSS). The PSS is a 14 item questionnaire that asked participants to rank how often they felt overwhelmed, overloaded, out of control, and unpredictable during the last two weeks on a 5-point Likert scale from 0 (never) to 4 (very often). A Wilcoxon signed rank test was calculated and revealed a significant decrease in PSS scores from pre-intervention to post intervention (Z = -2.418, p <.05). This indicates that average PSS scores decreased after utilizing the meditation application, which is associated with less perceived stress.

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