Well-Being & Health Care Workers

Results of a randomized and controlled clinical trial evaluating the use of a web-based continuing education intervention on the well-being of health care workers were recently published in JAMA Network Open. The intervention, termed Well-Being Essentials for Learning Life-Balance (WELL-B), comprised 5 online guided well-being modules and totaled 5 hours, completed over an 8-day period. The 5 sessions each provided current science on a topic as well as personal assessments and interactive content using the research, assessment, feedback and tool (RAFT) format.

The 5 topics were gratitude, work-life integration, self-compassion, cultivating awe, and group-level well-being. The participants were 643 health care workers, nearly 90% women, randomly divided into 2 cohorts for comparison. The first cohort of 331 completed the 8-day intervention during the study period, and the second control cohort of 312 completed the same intervention, but at the end of the study period. Thus, both groups were evaluated on day 1 (baseline) and again on day 8 (post-intervention); the second cohort was evaluated a third time on day 15, after they’d completed WELL-B, but the day 8 results from both groups were used for comparison. 

Four domains of assessment were the primary study outcomes: emotional exhaustion, emotional thriving, emotional recovery, and work-life integration. Each domain was shown to have improved by day 8 in cohort 1, with fairly impressive effect sizes. For example, a 16.8% reduction in emotional exhaustion was observed, larger than the 4.9% reduction reported in a review of studies designed to reduce burnout, and also larger than the 8.6% increase attributed to the COVID-19 pandemic. Overall, this positive psychology intervention, designed to be evidence-based and “bite-sized,” demonstrated impressive benefits for the well-being of health care workers.