Student Presenter(s): Gianna Davillas and Gianna Petrillo
Faculty Mentor: Sheldon Yao
School/College: Osteopathic Medicine, Old Westbury

Medical students have high stress levels as they need to balance many aspects of their lives. This includes lectures, labs, research, extracurriculars, and their personal lives. Mindfulness techniques have become more popular as a way to alleviate some stress. To help increase student engagement during the Osteopathic Manipulative Medicine (OMM) lab, mindfulness exercises were used to promote student focus and engagement. Our goal was to determine their effectiveness in improving first and second year OMM laboratory sessions. At the beginning of each OMM lab, students were given an exercise to do for approximately 5 minutes. Exercises included palpation, meditation, or breathing techniques. Once the semester ended, a survey was sent to first- and second-year students to assess the effectiveness of the exercises. The survey received 103/322 responses from first-year students and 104/301 responses from second-year students. Results indicated that 49.5% of 103 respondents and 38.5% of 104 respondents found the exercises very helpful. Additionally, 30.1% and 28.9% of first- and second-year respondents respectively believe the exercises were moderately helpful. A small percent found the exercises not very helpful or not at all helpful. Overall, the survey revealed that most students found the exercises to be helpful in their engagement and learning during OMM lab. Further studies should be done to assess the effects of incorporating mindfulness techniques into classroom settings.