Digital Stress Management Intervention for Health Care Providers

For health care providers, work-related stress can be a major challenge that can lead to frustration, lower motivation, reduced quality of life and burnout, and the last year's COVID-19 pandemic particularly emphasized the challenges in the stressful everyday life faced by health care providers.

There are, however, interventions that can be of support, both for the prevention of stress and for coping with stress in challenging situations, and in recent years there has also been an increased focus on stress in working life in this setting. Several studies have also recently been carried out which aim to deliver such interventions via applications (apps) to promote employees' physical and mental health, as well as their ability to cope with stress. However, there is a need for more research in the field, especially with a focus that content in such apps should be based on evidence-based theory, and that interviews and a similar qualitative approach should be included in studies to gain increased insight into the need for and usefulness of digital tools among health care providers.

This study will therefore test the effect of an app-based program for stress management, StressProffen, among health care providers, in a single arm study. The app contains 10 modules distributed over four weeks, focusing on education of different techniques for reduction of stress and stress reduction exercises.

StressProffen was initially developed and tested for stress management in patients with cancer, with good results. Among other things, a randomized controlled trial showed a statistically significant reduction in perceived stress, anxiety, depression and self-regulation fatigue, as well as increased health-related quality of life, for participants in the intervention group compared to the control group. The aim of this study is to test whether StressProffen can be of interest and support for stress management among health care providers.