Coping, perceived stress, and job satisfaction among medical interns: The mediating effect of mindfulness

BACKGROUND: Past research studies on the exploration of attributes to the stress of doctors/medical interns were reported more often than the types of coping strategies, healthy practices to strengthen their internal resources to deal effectively with the stressful situations. OBJECTIVES: The present study was conducted to find such internal resource – “mindfulness” as a mediator of coping, perceived stress, and job satisfaction among medical interns. METHODS: A cross-sectional descriptive study comprised 120 medical interns forms from various medical colleges in Mangalore were recruited and completed the assessment on mindfulness, cognitive-emotive regulation, coping strategies, perceived stress, and job satisfaction from doctoral interns were collected. RESULTS: Initial correlation analysis results indicate that adaptive coping strategies significantly associate with greater mindfulness and less perceived stress. In turn, mindfulness is negatively correlated with nonadaptive coping strategies and perceived. Job satisfaction showed no significant relationship with any of the other variables. Mediational models indicate that the relationship between adaptive coping strategies and perceived stress was significantly mediated by mindfulness. Furthermore, partial mediation between nonadaptive strategies and perceived stress through mindfulness indicates that respondents reported a high level of nonadaptive strategy experience and a lower level of mindfulness can be counterproductive as they encourage the ineffective way to deal with the stresses. CONCLUSION: The implication of the results were discussed with suggesting a possible intervention to improve the adaptive strategies and mindfulness among the medical interns.