SMART: Stress Management and Resilience Training for emergency physicians. Protocol for a pilot study with intervention. (Preprint)

Abstract

Background In recent years, the factors of stress, anxiety and work-life balance received more attention. More specifically, the determinants of professional well-being, impact of occupational risks and traumatic events, stress and type D personality, and work stress related problems in physicians in COVID-19 Times were addressed in physicians and more specifically in emergency physicians. The primary aim of this study is to evaluate the effectiveness of a Stress Management and Resiliency Training (SMART) program on stress, anxiety and resilience as well as the professional quality of life of hospital physicians and in particular emergency physicians. Methods This is a pre-post intervention study, pilot study with intervention. Setup / Participants: The participants (hospital physicians/emergency physicians) are recruited through internal and external networks such as the specialist medicine trainees and social media of the own professional group of physicians and physician specialists in training. A combination of several validated interventional and coping strategies will be used to achieve an improvement of personal factors such as stress reduction, anxiety reduction, resilience, quality of professional life of the hospital physicians/emergency physicians. This study also measures additional data such as heart rate variability and physical activity based on the number of daily steps. Discussion Some aspects of this intervention study have already been initiated in previous studies, whereby we aim to achieve even more efficient and structural improvement with a combination of various validated methodologies and coping strategies to address these factors (stress reduction, anxiety reduction, resilience increase, quality of life increase) of hospital/emergency physicians. The abovementioned study will also include process measures such as heart rate variability and physical activity based on the number of daily steps. With this she responds to new trends in chronic stress research. Further studies should be undertaken to confirm the results of this study to identify determinants that can be the object of adequate interventions to improve professional well-being in these physicians.