Identifying Mental Health Distress in EM Physicians

February 25, 2025 updated by: University of Pennsylvania

Investigating Proactive, Digital Methods to Identify Signs and Symptoms of Mental Health Distress in Emergency Medicine Physicians

This project seeks to develop and test provider-centered strategies that improve the detection and facilitate the treatment of physiologic and mental health symptoms in emergency medicine physicians. This will be done by investigating the feasibility and acceptability of wearable device and EMA feedback with personalized linkage to an evidence-based mental health platform at the University of Pennsylvania Health System.

Study Overview

Status

Completed

Conditions

Intervention / Treatment

Detailed Description

This proposal aims to conduct a 3-month pilot randomized control trial (n=60) testing feasibility, acceptability, and the exploratory effectiveness of digital data feedback (wearables and EMA) with tailored, symptom-specific linkage to mental health and resilience resources versus control on mental health symptoms (depression, anxiety, PTSD) and burnout in EM clinicians. The study will recruit and enroll 60 emergency medicine physicians, residents, and advanced practice providers via email and inperson outreach. Once enrolled, both arms be asked to take a baseline survey which will measure their level of well-being, burnout, depression, and anxiety.

Study participants will be randomized following consent and completion of baseline surveys. Participants will be randomly assigned to usual care or intervention. We will use 2:1 randomization. We will randomize in block sizes of 3 and 6.

Intervention: The intervention arm will then be given a wearable device and will be asked to wear it for 3 months. The device will collect biometric data on stress levels, sleep patterns, and other physiological measures of well-being. The intervention group will receive biweekly EMA short surveys, personalized bi-weekly reports from their EMA data, biometric feedback from wearable devices (sleep, heart rate variability, physical activity), and linkage to tailored and symptom-specific Cobalt resources on health and resilience. After 3 months, we will survey providers to complete a post-survey followed by a survey at 6-months following a 3-month washout period.

Control: The control arm will be asked to complete a baseline survey as well as one assessment at the end of the three-month study period. They will receive usual care, or clinician-initiated use of Penn Cobalt. They will then complete additional surveys at 3-months and 6-months.

Study Type

Interventional

Enrollment (Actual)

45

Phase

  • Not Applicable

Contacts and Locations

This section provides the contact details for those conducting the study, and information on where this study is being conducted.

Study Locations

  • United States
    • Pennsylvania
      • Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States, 19104
        • University of Pennsylvania

Participation Criteria

Researchers look for people who fit a certain description, called eligibility criteria. Some examples of these criteria are a person's general health condition or prior treatments.

Eligibility Criteria

Ages Eligible for Study

18 years and older (Adult, Older Adult)

Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Yes

Description

Inclusion Criteria:

  • 18 years of age or older
  • Emergency Medicine (EM) physician or advanced practice provider
  • Daily access to smart phone
  • Ability to use a wrist-worn wearable device
  • Has or is willing to create a Gmail / Google account
  • Provides at least 20 hours per week of clinical care.

Exclusion Criteria:

  • Under 18
  • Not a Penn EM physician or advanced practice provider
  • Does not have daily access to a smart phone
  • Unwilling or unable to wear a wearable device
  • Does not have or is unwilling to create a Gmail / Google account
  • Does not provide at least 20 hours per week of clinical care

Study Plan

This section provides details of the study plan, including how the study is designed and what the study is measuring.

How is the study designed?

Design Details

  • Primary Purpose: Health Services Research
  • Allocation: Randomized
  • Interventional Model: Parallel Assignment
  • Masking: None (Open Label)

Arms and Interventions

Participant Group / Arm
Intervention / Treatment
No Intervention: Control
Participants randomized to this arm will receive digital surveys over the course of 6 months (one at baseline, one at 3 months, and one at 6 months). These surveys will be the same as the intervention arm and will ask questions related to burnout, anxiety, depression, PTSD, and stress.
Experimental: Intervention
In addition to completing 3 surveys over the course of 6 months, participants in the intervention arm will be asked to wear a wearable device (FitBit Charge 5), complete texting-based ecological momentary assessments to gauge real-time feelings of stress, and receive bi-weekly personalized data dashboards to report back their data.
Other: Wearable Device and Ecological Momentary Assessments

The intervention will consist of three components:

  1. Completion of brief text-message based surveys 2-3 times per week
  2. Wearing a wrist-based wearable device to generate individual data insights on physiological data related to stress and well-being, including heart rate variability, stress scores, and sleep quality
  3. Individual biweekly reports of survey response trends and curated resources intended to support participant well-being

What is the study measuring?

Primary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure
Measure Description
Time Frame
Feasibility of Intervention (FIM)
Time Frame: Through study completion, on average 6 months
Feasibility will be measured by the Feasibility of Intervention Measure (FIM)
Through study completion, on average 6 months
Feasibility of Intervention (Study Retention)
Time Frame: Through study completion, on average 6 months
Feasibility will be measured by study retention
Through study completion, on average 6 months
Acceptability of Intervention (AIM)
Time Frame: Through study completion, on average 6 months
Acceptability will be measured by the validated Acceptability of Intervention Measure.
Through study completion, on average 6 months
Acceptability of Intervention (EMA Completion Rates)
Time Frame: Through study completion, on average 6 months
Acceptability will be measured by the open/completion rates of ecological momentary assessment.
Through study completion, on average 6 months

Secondary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure
Measure Description
Time Frame
Anxiety
Time Frame: Through study completion, on average 6 months
While the study will not be powered to detect effectiveness of the device on stress and other mental health indicators, secondary outcome measures will explore the potential for effect. The GAD-7 will be used to measure anxiety.
Through study completion, on average 6 months
Depression
Time Frame: Through study completion, on average 6 months
While the study will not be powered to detect effectiveness of the device on stress and other mental health indicators, secondary outcome measures will explore the potential for effect. The PHQ-8 will be used to measure depression.
Through study completion, on average 6 months
Professional Burnout
Time Frame: Through study completion, on average 6 months
While the study will not be powered to detect effectiveness of the device on stress and other mental health indicators, secondary outcome measures will explore the potential for effect. The Stanford Professional Fulfillment Index will be used to measure burnout.
Through study completion, on average 6 months
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
Time Frame: Through study completion, on average 6 months
While the study will not be powered to detect effectiveness of the device on stress and other mental health indicators, secondary outcome measures will explore the potential for effect. The PC-PTSD-5 will be used to measure PTSD.
Through study completion, on average 6 months

Collaborators and Investigators

This is where you will find people and organizations involved with this study.

Sponsor

University of Pennsylvania

Collaborators

Emergency Medicine Foundation

Study record dates

These dates track the progress of study record and summary results submissions to ClinicalTrials.gov. Study records and reported results are reviewed by the National Library of Medicine (NLM) to make sure they meet specific quality control standards before being posted on the public website.

Study Major Dates

Study Start (Actual)

October 3, 2023

Primary Completion (Actual)

June 10, 2024

Study Completion (Actual)

June 10, 2024

Study Registration Dates

First Submitted

October 26, 2022

First Submitted That Met QC Criteria

November 1, 2022

First Posted (Actual)

November 7, 2022

Study Record Updates

Last Update Posted (Actual)

March 25, 2025

Last Update Submitted That Met QC Criteria

February 25, 2025

Last Verified

February 1, 2025

More Information

Terms related to this study

Additional Relevant MeSH Terms

Other Study ID Numbers

  • 0852220

Plan for Individual participant data (IPD)

Plan to Share Individual Participant Data (IPD)?

NO

Drug and device information, study documents

Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated drug product

No

Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated device product

No

This information was retrieved directly from the website clinicaltrials.gov without any changes. If you have any requests to change, remove or update your study details, please contact register@clinicaltrials.gov. As soon as a change is implemented on clinicaltrials.gov, this will be updated automatically on our website as well.

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