JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Emergency departments are chaotic environments and these environments have been shown to negatively impact patient care. Less is known about the environments impact upon clinician health and well-being. Wearable devices provide a new opportunity to gather prospective data for clinicians, but less is known about the feasibility of these devices in the workplace and how to optimize them for clinicians.

Objective:

To test the feasibility and acceptability of wearable devices for clinician health and well-being monitoring.

Methods:

Prospective, longitudinal pilot study of emergency nurses and residents. The study sought to investigate the feasibility, acceptability, and adherence to using a wearable device to track health metrics and complete text message based assessments.

Results:

This was a pilot feasibility study and thus was not powered to detect individual health outcomes. Twenty total participants were enrolled (n=13, 65% were female), 12 were EM resident physicians and 8 were emergency nurses. Of the twenty, 10 participants routinely wore the wearable device (6 resident physicians and 4 nurses). Participants completing baseline mental health assessments reported mild anxiety as measured by the GAD-7 (mean score 5.07, SD 3.7), with 86.6% reporting minimal or mild anxiety. Participants also reported mild depressive symptoms as measured by the PHQ-8 (mean 5.73, SD 2.9), with 53.5% reporting mild depressive symptoms. Participants completed the professional fulfillment index to evaluate burnout and fulfillment. Individuals reported low professional fulfillment (mean 49.4, SD 16.9) moderate workplace exhaustion (mean 57.1, SD 24.4), and moderate interpersonal disengagement (mean 44.7, SD 20.1). Participants were asked via survey to comment on their early thoughts and goals with the pilot and the device. Notable themes emerged reflecting: 1) technologic features (e.g., seeking a device with a watch face), 2) way to integrate data into their personal lives and clinical roles, and 3) increasing self-awareness of the objective measures of stress related to clinical care.

Conclusions:

This pilot study of emergency nurses and resident physicians investigating wearable devices to capture physiologic data from a cohort, represents early signals towards feasible and acceptable programs. Those pilot study identifies opportunities and interest in these mechanism and a need to leverage more consumer facing and potentially less sophisticated wearable devices for emergency clinicians. These methods can be further explored and larger, randomized trials to investigate these strategies and how we support the workforce.