Mental Health Issue
Conditions
Keywords
stress levels, anxiety, depression
Brief summary
Mental health issues and suicide are becoming increasingly common among health care trainees and providers. Suicide is the leading cause of death among male medical residents and the second leading cause of death among female residents.
Detailed description
Training programs are usually very rigorous, caring for patients is stressful, and those who care for others often feel that they can't or shouldn't admit that they need care themselves. Unfortunately, there is often a stigma associated with mental illness, and trainees may feel that admitting that they struggle could damage their careers. The need exists for easily accessible, immediate, crisis support for medical trainees who are experiencing a mental health crisis. Although the effectiveness of mental health apps has been evaluated in college students, there is very little data assessing their use in medical and nurse anesthesia students. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the effect of a mental wellness app on the mental wellness of medical and nurse anesthesia students.
Interventions
BEHAVIORALQActual
QActual is a phone-based app that offers peer-to-peer support, tracks mental wellness self-assessments, and provides support to users who are in crisis.
Sponsors
Wake Forest University Health Sciences
Study design
Allocation
NON_RANDOMIZED
Intervention model
SINGLE_GROUP
Primary purpose
SUPPORTIVE_CARE
Masking
NONE
Intervention model description
This will be a non-randomized, control-group, year-long study exploring the impact of a mental wellness app on various aspects of mental wellness in first-year medical students and second-year nurse anesthesia (CRNA) students from Wake Forest University School of Medicine (WFUSM) during the 2023 - 2024 academic year (approximately July 2023 - June 2024).
Eligibility
Sex/Gender
ALL
Age
18 Years to No maximum
Healthy volunteers
Yes
Inclusion criteria
* first-year medical students and second-year nurse anesthesia (CRNA) students from Wake Forest University School of Medicine during the 2023 - 2024 academic year (approximately July 2023 - June 2024).
Exclusion criteria
* none
Design outcomes
Primary
| Measure | Time frame | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9) scores | Baseline | Scores less than 5 almost always signified the absence of a depressive disorder; scores of 5 to 9 predominantly represented patients with either no depression or subthreshold (i.e., other) depression; scores of 10 to 14 represented a spectrum of patients; and scores of 15 or greater usually indicated major depression. |
Secondary
| Measure | Time frame | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Number of crisis alerts triggered | Year 1 | Number of crisis alerts triggered |
| Number of daily wellness check-ins completed | Year 1 | Number of daily wellness check-ins completed |
| Satisfaction with the app Scores | Year 1 | Satisfaction with the app scores - a global scale that is used to assess attitudes and views. It is a scale with 5 answer options which has two utmost poles and a neutral option linked with intermediate answer options. For example, agree, fully agree, neither agree nor disagree, disagree, and fully disagree |
| Time periods associated with lower daily wellness check scores | Year 1 | Time periods associated with lower daily wellness check scores (these will be compared to the academic calendar to detect any correlations) - The mean daily wellness check scores for Medical students and CRNA students will be retrospectively reviewed. Days where the mean score for the day differ significantly from the mean score for the year will be recorded |
Countries
United States
Outcome results
None listed