JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Mental health has come to be understood as not merely the absence of mental illness but also the presence of mental wellbeing, and recent interventions have sought to increase wellbeing in various populations. One population that deserves particular attention is that of healthcare workers, whose occupations entail high levels of stress, especially given the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. A neuroscience-based online wellbeing program for healthcare workers – the Thrive program – has been newly developed in order to promote habits and activities that contribute to brain health and overall mental wellbeing.

Objective:

This paper describes the protocol for a randomised controlled trial whose objective is to evaluate the Thrive program in comparison to an active control condition, in order to measure whether the program is effective at increasing wellbeing and decreasing symptoms of psychological distress in healthcare workers at a designated Australian hospital.

Methods:

The trial will comprise two groups (intervention versus active control) and four measurement occasions over a 12-week period. A survey will be administered in each of weeks 0, 4, 8, and 12, and the wellbeing program will be delivered in weeks 1-7 (via online video presentations or digital pamphlets). Each of the four surveys will comprise a range of questionnaires to measure wellbeing, psychological distress, and other key variables. The planned analyses will estimate group-by-time interaction effects, to test the hypothesis that mental health will increase over time in the intervention condition, relative to the active control condition.

Results:

The Thrive program was delivered in a small number of wards at the hospital between February and July 2021, and it will be delivered to the remaining wards from October to December 2021. A power calculation has recommended a sample size of at least 200 participants in total. A linear mixed model will be used to estimate the interaction effects.

Conclusions:

This trial seeks to evaluate a new, online wellbeing program for healthcare workers at a major public hospital. It will contribute to the growing body of research on mental wellbeing and ways to promote it. Clinical Trial: This trial was prospectively registered with the Australian New Zealand Clinical Trials Registry (registration approved on 14 January 2021; trial ID number: ACTRN12621000027819).