Abstract
The survey demonstrated a higher level of stress in nurses in relative to other populations. Stress affects the executive functioning of the brain and possibly affects workability and daily living. The current investigation aimed to examine the effectiveness of stress management by deep breathing and mindfulness training on executive function and EEG in nurse of health region 4. This study is a randomized controlled trial with 10 participants who received the mindfulness training (i.e., experimental group) and another group (i.e., control group) received the deep breathing training. Research tools included the perceived stress scale, computerized neuropsychological tests (i.e., Berg s Card Sorting and Stroop), and a brainwave recording device (i.e., Emotiv epoc with 14 channels. Repeated measures were used to compare the scores from the scale, co mputerized tasks, and brainwaves of both groups during pretest, posttest, and follow up. The main findings indicated that the mindfulness training significantly decreased stress and increased executive functions of the nurses, but the breathing training did not affect the stress and executive functions of the nurses. Furthermore, brainwaves analysis from five bands of resting state EEG (i.e., delta, theta, alpha, beta, and gamma) found that the breathing training induced only the changes in theta and beta waves at frontal electrode sites (i.e., F3 and FC5 for theta and F3 and F8 for beta). However, the mindfulness training elicited the changes in all five EEG bands (i.e., delta for F7 and P8; theta for Q1; alpha for F7 and P8; beta for F3 and F7; gamma for F7 and P8) at frontal, parietal, and occipital electrode The behavioral and EEG results confirmed the effectiveness of mindfulness training in nurses , which should be promoted to reduce stress in organization and policy levels.
