by Jimmy Andreyvan Cainamarks-Alejandro, Liliana Cruz-Ausejo, Miguel Angel Burgos-Flores, Jaime Rosales-Rimache, Jonh Astete-Cornejo, David Villarreal-Zegarra
BackgroundThe COVID-19 pandemic marked an increase in depressive, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms, more specifically among healthcare workers, teachers, and police officers. These workers face external and occupational factors which had a significant impact on mental health, significant increase in workload and direct exposure to the virus, shortage of personnel protective equipment, and instances of abuse, including discrimination. Mental health care in primary care requires a process of early identification and timely referral of complex cases. Telehealth emerges as an effective alternative for addressing challenges in mental health care, although its implementation encounters obstacles.
ObjectiveTo design a telehealth service that facilitates screening, initial management, and timely referral for mental health diagnoses in workers with prior SARS-CoV-2 infection, and to evaluate usability, acceptability, and user satisfaction.
MethodsMixed-method study with a user-centered design approach involving key external and internal service users in three sequential stages (pre-design, co-design, and post-design). The study phases lasted 6 months, involving a total of 23 participants in the pre-design phase (contextual inquiry and preparation and training), 12 participants in the co-design phase (framing the issue, generative design, and sharing design), and in the post-design phase, 4 participants were involved in service implementation, and 81 participants—drawn from the subgroup of 134 users who received psychoeducation—were included in the efficacy assessment.
ResultsThe proposal included the development and evaluation of a service model guide and a telehealth software platform. First, the participants took part in a series of workshops (Pre-design, Co-design) where they provided ideas for meeting the product requirements, based on the Design Thinking methodology framework. The telehealth service model was named TelePsico CENSOPAS. It comprised four processes: a) Service promotion; b) User pre-identification; c) Appointment management; d) Psychoeducation counseling and referral. The Telehealth platform was designed through three cycles of an iterative process and integrated a proprietary development platform with third-party service technologies for communication support and information exchange. During post-design, the pilot test involved 698 screened patients; 193 were identified with mental health risks, and 134 of them received psychoeducation sessions. In addition to user acceptance, the usability score of the platform was 86.1 ± 16.9 SD, satisfaction dimensions of the service was 45.1 ± 7.2 SD for satisfaction with care processes, and 36.7 ± 5.2 SD satisfaction with psychological care.
ConclusionThe proposal for mental health telehealth services and its supporting platform was successfully developed and accepted by both internal and external users, particularly within well-structured occupational health services in workplaces serving vulnerable occupational groups. In addition, it achieved higher satisfaction and usability scores than Peru’s outpatient care services. These findings support the replicability of user-centered design frameworks—such as design thinking—within the occupational health sphere.
Process evaluation provides insight into how interventions are delivered across varying contexts and why interventions work in some contexts and not in others. This manuscript outlines the protocol for a process evaluation embedded in a hybrid type 1 effectiveness-implementation randomised clinical trial of incremental-start haemodialysis (HD) versus conventional HD delivered to patients starting chronic dialysis (the TwoPlus Study). The trial will simultaneously assess the effectiveness of incremental-start HD in real-world settings and the implementation strategies needed to successfully integrate this intervention into routine practice. This manuscript describes the rationale and methods used to capture how incremental-start HD is implemented across settings and the factors influencing its implementation success or failure within this trial.
We will use the Consolidated Framework for Implementation Research (CFIR) and the Reach, Effectiveness, Adoption, Implementation and Maintenance (RE-AIM) frameworks to inform process evaluation. Mixed methods include surveys conducted with treating providers (physicians) and dialysis personnel (nurses and dialysis administrators); semi-structured interviews with patient participants, caregivers of patient participants, treating providers (physicians and advanced practice practitioners), dialysis personnel (nurses, dieticians and social workers); and focus group meetings with study investigators and stakeholder partners. Data will be collected on the following implementation determinants: (a) organisational readiness to change, intervention acceptability and appropriateness; (b) inner setting characteristics underlying barriers and facilitators to the adoption of HD intervention at the enrollment centres; (c) external factors that mediate implementation; (d) adoption; (e) reach; (f) fidelity, to assess adherence to serial timed urine collection and HD treatment schedule; and (g) sustainability, to assess barriers and facilitators to maintaining intervention. Qualitative and quantitative data will be analysed iteratively and triangulated following a convergent parallel and pragmatic approach. Mixed methods analysis will use qualitative data to lend insight to quantitative findings. Process evaluation is important to understand factors influencing trial outcomes and identify potential contextual barriers and facilitators for the potential implementation of incremental-start HD into usual workflows in varied outpatient dialysis clinics and clinical practices. The process evaluation will help interpret and contextualise the trial clinical outcomes’ findings.
The study protocol was approved by the Wake Forest University School of Medicine Institutional Review Board (IRB). Findings from this study will be disseminated through peer-reviewed journals and scientific conferences.
Nurses' burnout, work instability (WI), and job satisfaction (JS) in their practice environment (PE) are well established in the literature. However, perinatal missed care (PMC), a subset of missed nursing care, remains underreported among maternity nurses.
To examine the mediating role of PE and burnout in the associations of WI, JS, and PMC among maternity nurses.
A cross-sectional and correlational study employed consecutive sampling to recruit maternity nurses (n = 312) from five hospitals in Saudi Arabia (three government and two private hospitals in Hail and Makkah regions, respectively). Maternity staff nurses, regardless of their sex, years of professional nursing experience, or nationality, who met inclusion criteria were included in this study. Data was collected from July to September 2024 using four standardized self-report scales. Structural equation modeling was utilized for statistical analyses.
Maternity nurses' WI negatively influenced PE (β = −0.23, p = 0.014), while positively affected PMC (β = 0.15, p = 0.031). The PE positively affected JS (β = 0.24, p = 0.034) but had a negative effect on burnout (β = −0.24, p = 0.007) and PMC (β = −0.21, p = 0.038). Burnout negatively affected JS (β = −0.25, p = 0.028), while positively associated with PMC (β = 0.20, p = 0.022). PE mediated the associations between WI and burnout (β = 0.05, p = 0.019), JS (β = −0.07, p = 0.020), and PMC (β = −0.06, p = 0.008). Meanwhile, burnout mediated between PE and JS (β = 0.05, p = 0.030) and PMC (β = −0.04, p = 0.023).
Understanding the relationships among maternity nurses' burnout, JS, PE, and PMC is key to improving the quality of perinatal care and ensuring the patients' well-being. By focusing on strategies to enhance the PE (e.g., adequate staffing and resources, improved nurse–patient ratio), reduce burnout (e.g., meditation and mindfulness programs, coping intervention programs), and improve JS (e.g., work schedule flexibility, facilitate work-life balance, staff professional development), healthcare organizations can mitigate the occurrence of PMC.