Brief mindfulness coaching enhances selective attention in medical scientists: A pilot study

Medical scientists have dual commitments to medicine and research that create hectic and stressful work schedules that can impact well-being as well as cognition. In this study, we evaluated whether mindfulness coaching alongside wearable-based lifestyle monitoring can benefit this population. We conducted a waitlist-controlled intervention study (n = 43) that included participation from pre-clinical students, graduate students, and medical scientist faculty. Quantitative outcomes assessments included subjective measures of burnout, mindfulness, self-compassion, and wellbeing, as well as objective cognitive assessments. Results showed no impacts on subjective measures (p > 0.2). Yet, notably objective performance on attentive cognition was improved at post-intervention (p = 0.003). Extent of improvement in selective attention was correlated with suppression of visual alpha oscillations – a neural marker for distractibility - measured using electroencephalography (EEG) (r = -0.32, p &..., Methods
A total of 43 physician-scientists participated in the study (mean age: 28.95 ± 4.36 years, range: 23-43 years, 41.86% female). Most (76.7% ) participants were recruited from the dual-degree MSTP at the University of California San Diego (UCSD), and 23.3% had graduated an MD PhD program and were now physicians/junior faculty. Recruitment occurred directly through an in-person, annual retreat as well as over email. All participants provided written informed consent for study participation in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki, and all experimental procedures were approved by the UCSD Institutional Review Board
 
All data collection and intervention took place during Fall 2021 through Summer 2022. Participants provided demographic information at the beginning of the study. Of the total 43 participants, 22 were randomly assigned to the well-being intervention group and 21 were assigned to a waitlist control group. The sample size within each group was powered to ..., , # **Title of Dataset: Brief mindfulness coaching enhances selective attention in medical scientists: A pilot study**

Brief summary of dataset contents, contextualized in experimental procedures and results.

**Description of the Data and file structure**

The xlsx file contains the study data corresponding to (1) Quantitative Outcomes Data and (2) Qualitative Thematic Analysis.

Spreadsheet (1) - Quantitative Outcomes Data

GroupID: A (Intervention) or B (Waitlist)

SubjectIndex: Subject Study ID

Age Bin: Subject age bin in years, bin 1 (age <18), 2 (age 18-29), 3 (age 30-39), 4 (age 40-49), 5 (age 50-59), 6 (age 60-69), 7 (age 70-79), 8 (age 80-89), 9 (age >90)

Gender: Subject Gender, 1: male, 2: female, 3: other

Ethnicity: Subject ethnicity, 1: Caucasian; 2: Black/African American; 3: Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander; 4: Asian; 5: Native American; 6: More than one ethnicity; 7: Other

Pre-mbiexhaustion: Pre-Maslach Burnout Inventory exhaustion score of each participant

P...,