JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

University hospital employees face role-specific stressors that can impair mental well-being and work-related vitality. While worksite health promotion programs show potential for improving mental well-being by targeting lifestyle behaviors, most target single professions or hospital subunits, and evidence for mental well-being and work-related vitality remains mixed. Mobile applications offer unique advantages for delivering such worksite health promotion programs hospital-wide. However, accessible interventions tailored to a diverse workforce are lacking.

Objective:

To investigate the feasibility of an app-based worksite health promotion program (the Recharge360 program) targeting multiple lifestyle behaviors, including a team-based competition element, for improving mental well-being and work-related vitality of hospital employees over a 5-month follow-up period. This was done by evaluating two objectives: 1) the implementation process of the program, and 2) the preliminary effects of the program on mental well-being and work-related vitality.

Methods:

We included 532 employees (aged 43±12 years, 91% women, 90% highly educated) from a university hospital in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. The study had a single-arm, longitudinal pretest-posttest design lasting five months, during which employees participated in the 5-day Recharge360 program (Recharge week) three times: in week one, nine, and 17. At baseline (T0) and after each Recharge week (T1-T3), we assessed mental well-being, work ability, need for recovery, and task performance. The process was evaluated by assessing recruitment, attrition, and survey completion rates, and degree of participation. Preliminary effects were evaluated by linear mixed model regression analyses to assess changes in mental well-being and work-related vitality between baseline and follow-up.

Results:

Recruitment appeared feasible, but attrition rates were high (up to 70% in the final Recharge week) and degree of participation decreased over time. We showed statistically significant, albeit small, increases in well-being at T3 (β: 2.08, 95%CI: 0.33;3.84), with progressively larger improvements in the analyses among those who started at least one, two and all three Recharge weeks (β: 3.27, 95%CI: 1.09;5.45). Results for work-related vitality were mixed. Need for recovery remained unchanged, task performance increased slightly at T3 (β: 0.16, 95%CI: 0.07;0.24). Work ability showed a small, but statistically significant, decline across follow-up (β: -0.46, 95%CI: -0.64;-0.29).

Conclusions:

This app-based worksite health promotion program might be feasible to implement in a university hospital setting and shows potential to slightly improve mental well-being, but primarily for a selective group of highly educated, health-conscious women. While these findings support further investigation in a randomized controlled trial in similar university hospital settings, they also highlight the need for more participatory study designs to improve tailoring of program components and engagement of underrepresented groups, as well as for a supportive culture and population-based approaches at the organizational level.