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Development of the Shift Smartphone App to Support the Emotional Well-Being of Junior Physicians: Design of a Prototype and Results of Usability and Acceptability Testing

BACKGROUND: Junior physicians report higher levels of psychological distress than senior doctors and report several barriers to seeking professional mental health support, including concerns about confidentiality and career progression. Mobile health (mHealth) apps may be utilized to help overcome t...

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Autores principales: Counson, Isabelle, Bartholomew, Alexandra, Crawford, Joanna, Petrie, Katherine, Basarkod, Geetanjali, Moynihan, Victoria, Pires, Josie, Cohen, Rachel, Glozier, Nicholas, Harvey, Samuel, Sanatkar, Samineh
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: JMIR Publications 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8686399/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34860662
http://dx.doi.org/10.2196/26370
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author Counson, Isabelle
Bartholomew, Alexandra
Crawford, Joanna
Petrie, Katherine
Basarkod, Geetanjali
Moynihan, Victoria
Pires, Josie
Cohen, Rachel
Glozier, Nicholas
Harvey, Samuel
Sanatkar, Samineh
author_facet Counson, Isabelle
Bartholomew, Alexandra
Crawford, Joanna
Petrie, Katherine
Basarkod, Geetanjali
Moynihan, Victoria
Pires, Josie
Cohen, Rachel
Glozier, Nicholas
Harvey, Samuel
Sanatkar, Samineh
author_sort Counson, Isabelle
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Junior physicians report higher levels of psychological distress than senior doctors and report several barriers to seeking professional mental health support, including concerns about confidentiality and career progression. Mobile health (mHealth) apps may be utilized to help overcome these barriers to assist the emotional well-being of this population and encourage help-seeking. OBJECTIVE: This study describes the development and pilot trial of the Shift mHealth app to provide an unobtrusive avenue for junior physicians to seek information about, and help for, well-being and mental health concerns, which is sensitive to workplace settings. METHODS: A 4-phase iterative development process was undertaken to create the content and features of Shift involving junior physicians using the principles of user-centered design. These 4 phases were—needs assessment, on the basis of interviews with 12 junior physicians; prototype development with user experience feedback from 2 junior physicians; evaluation, consisting of a pilot trial with 22 junior physicians to assess the usability and acceptability of the initial prototype; and redesign, including user experience workshops with 51 junior physicians. RESULTS: Qualitative results informed the content and design of Shift to ensure that the app was tailored to junior physicians’ needs. The Shift app prototype contained cognitive behavioral, mindfulness, value-based actions, and psychoeducational modules, as well as a tracking function that visualized patterns of daily variations in mood and health behaviors. Pilot-testing revealed possible issues with the organization of the app content, which were addressed through a thorough restructuring and redesign of Shift with the help of junior physicians across 3 user experience workshops. CONCLUSIONS: This study demonstrates the importance of ongoing end user involvement in the creation of a specialized mHealth app for a unique working population experiencing profession-specific stressors and barriers to help-seeking. The development and pilot trial of this novel Shift mHealth app are the first steps in addressing the mental health and support-seeking needs of junior physicians, although further research is required to validate its effectiveness and appropriateness on a larger scale.
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spelling pubmed-86863992022-01-10 Development of the Shift Smartphone App to Support the Emotional Well-Being of Junior Physicians: Design of a Prototype and Results of Usability and Acceptability Testing Counson, Isabelle Bartholomew, Alexandra Crawford, Joanna Petrie, Katherine Basarkod, Geetanjali Moynihan, Victoria Pires, Josie Cohen, Rachel Glozier, Nicholas Harvey, Samuel Sanatkar, Samineh JMIR Form Res Original Paper BACKGROUND: Junior physicians report higher levels of psychological distress than senior doctors and report several barriers to seeking professional mental health support, including concerns about confidentiality and career progression. Mobile health (mHealth) apps may be utilized to help overcome these barriers to assist the emotional well-being of this population and encourage help-seeking. OBJECTIVE: This study describes the development and pilot trial of the Shift mHealth app to provide an unobtrusive avenue for junior physicians to seek information about, and help for, well-being and mental health concerns, which is sensitive to workplace settings. METHODS: A 4-phase iterative development process was undertaken to create the content and features of Shift involving junior physicians using the principles of user-centered design. These 4 phases were—needs assessment, on the basis of interviews with 12 junior physicians; prototype development with user experience feedback from 2 junior physicians; evaluation, consisting of a pilot trial with 22 junior physicians to assess the usability and acceptability of the initial prototype; and redesign, including user experience workshops with 51 junior physicians. RESULTS: Qualitative results informed the content and design of Shift to ensure that the app was tailored to junior physicians’ needs. The Shift app prototype contained cognitive behavioral, mindfulness, value-based actions, and psychoeducational modules, as well as a tracking function that visualized patterns of daily variations in mood and health behaviors. Pilot-testing revealed possible issues with the organization of the app content, which were addressed through a thorough restructuring and redesign of Shift with the help of junior physicians across 3 user experience workshops. CONCLUSIONS: This study demonstrates the importance of ongoing end user involvement in the creation of a specialized mHealth app for a unique working population experiencing profession-specific stressors and barriers to help-seeking. The development and pilot trial of this novel Shift mHealth app are the first steps in addressing the mental health and support-seeking needs of junior physicians, although further research is required to validate its effectiveness and appropriateness on a larger scale. JMIR Publications 2021-12-02 /pmc/articles/PMC8686399/ /pubmed/34860662 http://dx.doi.org/10.2196/26370 Text en ©Isabelle Counson, Alexandra Bartholomew, Joanna Crawford, Katherine Petrie, Geetanjali Basarkod, Victoria Moynihan, Josie Pires, Rachel Cohen, Nicholas Glozier, Samuel Harvey, Samineh Sanatkar. Originally published in JMIR Formative Research (https://formative.jmir.org), 02.12.2021. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work, first published in JMIR Formative Research, is properly cited. The complete bibliographic information, a link to the original publication on https://formative.jmir.org, as well as this copyright and license information must be included.
spellingShingle Original Paper
Counson, Isabelle
Bartholomew, Alexandra
Crawford, Joanna
Petrie, Katherine
Basarkod, Geetanjali
Moynihan, Victoria
Pires, Josie
Cohen, Rachel
Glozier, Nicholas
Harvey, Samuel
Sanatkar, Samineh
Development of the Shift Smartphone App to Support the Emotional Well-Being of Junior Physicians: Design of a Prototype and Results of Usability and Acceptability Testing
title Development of the Shift Smartphone App to Support the Emotional Well-Being of Junior Physicians: Design of a Prototype and Results of Usability and Acceptability Testing
title_full Development of the Shift Smartphone App to Support the Emotional Well-Being of Junior Physicians: Design of a Prototype and Results of Usability and Acceptability Testing
title_fullStr Development of the Shift Smartphone App to Support the Emotional Well-Being of Junior Physicians: Design of a Prototype and Results of Usability and Acceptability Testing
title_full_unstemmed Development of the Shift Smartphone App to Support the Emotional Well-Being of Junior Physicians: Design of a Prototype and Results of Usability and Acceptability Testing
title_short Development of the Shift Smartphone App to Support the Emotional Well-Being of Junior Physicians: Design of a Prototype and Results of Usability and Acceptability Testing
title_sort development of the shift smartphone app to support the emotional well-being of junior physicians: design of a prototype and results of usability and acceptability testing
topic Original Paper
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8686399/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34860662
http://dx.doi.org/10.2196/26370
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