Meditation Practice in Pediatric Healthcare Professionals: a Randomized Controlled Clinical Trial

Rationale: Healthcare professionals face a growing burden of responsibilities and work overload which may cause psychological suffering expressed by burnout, depression and other negative psychological variables. On the other hand, there are individual strategies which may be involved and facilitate the coping process: resilience, self-compassion, subjective well-being, subjective quality of life. In order to maintain these positive characteristics, it is necessary that one may decouple from automatic thoughts, habits and patterns of unhealthy behaviors, leading to behavioral and physiological regulation. There are many mindfulness techniques, which hold in common the following operating parameters: use of a specific technique, clearly defined and regularly practiced; use of muscle relaxation during the process; existence of logical relaxation without the intention of analyzing, judging or creating any expectation about the process. Specifically, Yoga is an ancient Indian philosophical and practical system and its ultimate goal is to calm the human mind, and increase vital capabilities. In addition to the ethical precepts of Yoga, its practices involve asanas (postures), pranayama (breathing exercises) and dhyana (meditation). Therefore, the process must be done in a gradual and progressive manner, from the outermost to the innermost, from the simplest to the most complex - from the body to the mind, with breath as a bridge between them. Many studies have shown the positive effects of Yoga and meditation on psychometric variables, however, there are few which address the effectiveness of Yoga on improving psychometric variables of health care professionals. Thus, aiming to reduce the symptoms that health care professionals suffer when they are in burnout, this study intends to use Yoga meditation, which may enable health professionals to experience decoupling of harmful feelings, improving one's own inner self-relationship and therefore, with patients and their families.

Primary Objective: To assess whether a 8-week intervention of a yoga meditation program influences psychometric (burnout, resilience, self-compassion, subjective well-being, health related quality of life and mindfulness) and physiological (polysomnography, glutathione, catecholamine and serotonin) variables of Pediatrics health professionals.

Secondary Objective: To investigate the cross psychometric profile of Federal University of São Paulo (UNIFESP) Pediatrics professionals at the inception of the program.

Methodology Experimental design: randomized controlled clinical trial.

Participants: 60 health professionals from the Pediatrics Department of a tertiary hospital from UNIFESP will be randomized to meditation or control (waiting list) groups. At the end of the protocol participants of the control group will be offered the possibility to participate of an identical meditation program. Inclusion criteria: adults; both sexes; not diagnosed with psychiatric/cognitive disorder or taking any medication which might bias the evaluation process. The intervention group will participate in an 8-week course of meditation (2 30-min classes a week).