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Yoga in a palliative care suite: Promoting self-care amongst nurses and practitioners.

169 Background: North Shore University Hospital (NSUH) in Manhasset, NY has a thriving in-patient palliative medicine consult service and a 10 bed palliative care suite (PCS). The PCS specializes in managing and treating symptoms as well as the psycho-social, interpersonal and emotional needs of our patients and families. Approximately 80% of the admitted patients expire on the unit. This high rate of patient expiration presents a unique challenge for staff working in this setting. In order to promote self-care and prevent burnout we implemented a yoga program for the nurses and practitioners in the PCS. Our goal was to assess the effectiveness of the yoga program on staff well-being and perceptions on the unit.


METHODS
We started with an evidence based literature search to validate the high amount of burnout in the clinical setting amongst staff and the benefits of yoga on reducing stress and promoting self-care. A fellow nurse certified yoga instructor was identified to run each session. Participation waivers were obtained from all staff. The yoga program started in June 2013 once to twice weekly in the PCS. All participants were surveyed to evaluate compassion fatigue, burnout and perception of organizational involvement using the professional quality of life scale (ProQOL).


RESULTS
There were a total of 23 subjects; 13 (56.52%) participated in yoga and 10 (43.48%) did not. Most of the participants were female and registered nurses. Results of the ProQOL showed no significant difference in compassion fatigue but the majority of subjects reported high perception of organizational involvement from their managers after the program was implemented.


CONCLUSIONS
The program was feasible, of low cost and sustainable although we did face some challenges. It further identified the value of support from management to improve practitioner self-care and burnout. Our future plans include, assessing effectiveness on a larger scale, offering yoga to patients and family and continuing to implement the project on a more structured basis in the PCS.