JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

In recent years, mobile health (mHealth) interventions have been developed to prevent burnout, promote anxiety management and provide health education to workers in various workplace settings. However, there remains a paucity of such interventions for Frontline Health Workers (FHWs), even though FHWs are the most susceptible to stress due to the nature of their jobs. A deeper understanding of the challenges and needs of the health workers is necessary to develop such interventions. We used qualitative methods to investigate those needs.

Objective:

The goal of this study was to provide suggestions for designing mHealth interventions that could address the workplace stressors of FHWs based on the understanding of their needs from FHWs’ perspectives.

Methods:

A mixed-methods qualitative study was conducted. Using a variety of search strings, we first collected 41 relevant online news articles published between December 2019 and May 2020 through Google search engine. A cross-section survey was then conducted with 20 FHWs to analyze the same issues. Two researchers independently conducted qualitative analysis of all the collected data using a deductive followed by an inductive approach.

Results:

The analysis led to the identification of six key stressors and four stress management strategies used by the FHWs. The analysis results can be summarized into seven user needs, and five design requirements that can provide directions for developing a mobile health (mHealth) based intervention for providing stress management supports to FHWs in their workplace. We recommend incorporating workplace connectivity, automation, interactive support, self-monitoring, and evidence- based resources within the mHealth intervention.

Conclusions:

Understanding sources of stress from the perspective of the FHWs brought many diverse user needs to light that are good targets for mHealth based interventions. Further research is required to validate these suggestions with the target users.