Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Research Protocols
Date Submitted: Nov 1, 2021
Date Accepted: Jan 27, 2022
Date Submitted to PubMed: Feb 11, 2022
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
The Essential Network (TEN): Protocol for an implementation trial of a digital-first mental health solution for Australian healthcare workers during COVID-19
ABSTRACT
Background:
The COVID-19 pandemic has placed healthcare workers (HCWs) under severe stress, compounded by barriers to seeking mental health support among HCWs. The Essential Network (TEN) is a blend of digital and person-to-person (blended care) mental health support services for HCWs, funded by the Australian Federal Department of Health as part of their national COVID-19 response strategy. New blended services need to demonstrate improvements in mental health symptoms and test acceptability in their target audience, as well as review implementation strategies to improve engagement.
Objective:
The primary objective of this implementation trial is to design and test an implementation strategy to improve uptake of TEN. The secondary objectives are examining the acceptability of TEN among HCWs, changes in mental health outcomes associated with use of TEN, as well as reductions in mental health stigma among HCWs following use of TEN.
Methods:
The implementation trial contains three components: a consultation study with up to 39 stakeholders or researchers with implementation experience to design an implementation strategy; a longitudinal observational study of at least 105 healthcare workers to examine the acceptability of TEN and the effectiveness of TEN at one and six months in improving mental health (as assessed by Distress Questionnaire (DQ-5), Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9), Generalised Anxiety Disorder (GAD-7), Oldenburg Burnout Inventory (OBI-16), and Work and Social Adjustment Scale (WSAS)) and reducing mental health stigma (Endorsed and Anticipated Stigma Inventory (EASI)); and an implementation study where TEN service uptake analytics will be examined for three months before and after the introduction of the implementation strategy.
Results:
The implementation strategy, designed with input from the consultation and observational studies, is expected to lead to an increased number of unique visits to the TEN Website in the three months following the introduction of the implementation strategy. The observational study is expected to observe high service acceptability. Moderate improvements to general mental health (DQ-5, WSAS) and a reduction in workplace- and treatment-related mental health stigma (EASI) between the baseline and 1-month timepoints.
Conclusions:
TEN is a first-of-kind blended mental health service available to Australian HCWs. The results of this project have the potential to inform the implementation and development of blended care mental health services, as well as how such services can be effectively implemented during crisis. Clinical Trial: N/A
Citation
Request queued. Please wait while the file is being generated. It may take some time.
Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.