Introduction: Nursing is known as a stressful job that can seriously endanger the health of nurses. This study was performed with the purpose of examining the effectiveness of mindfulness-based stress reduction on perceived stress, resilience and quality of life in nurses.

Methods: In a quasi-experimental design with pre-test and post-test, using available sampling, 22 nurses were selected according to the inclusion criteria and randomly divided to two groups, intervention and control group (11 nurses each group). The intervention consisted of eight 2-hour sessions of mindfulness-based stress reduction treatment conducted only for the experimental group. The participants in pre-test and post-test were examined by the Perceived Stress Scale (PSS) of Cohen, Coner and Davidson Resilience Scale (CD-RSC) and short form of quality of life questionnaire (SF-36). Data were analyzed by SPSS software version 19 using analysis of covariance.

Results: The intervention group showed a significant increase in quality of life in the mental health component compared with the control group (P < 0.01). However, no significant difference was shown in reduction of perceived stress and resilience between intervention and control groups (P > 0.05).

Conclusions: Mindfulness-based stress reduction can be effective for promoting the mental health factor of the life quality in nurses.