BACKGROUND
Junior doctors report higher levels of psychological distress than more senior doctors and report several barriers to seeking professional mental health support, including concerns about confidentiality and career progression. Mobile health applications (mHealth apps) may be utilised to help overcome these barriers to assist the emotional wellbeing of this population and encourage help-seeking.
OBJECTIVE
We describe the development and pilot trial of the Shift mHealth app to provide an unobtrusive avenue for junior doctors to seek information about, and help for, wellbeing and mental health concerns that is sensitive to workplace settings.
METHODS
A 4-phase iterative development process was undertaken to create the content and features of Shift involving junior doctors, using principles of user-centered design. These four phases were: I) Needs assessment, based on interviews with 12 junior doctors; II) Prototype development with user experience feedback from two junior doctors; III) Evaluation, consisting of a pilot trial with 22 junior doctors to assess usability and acceptability of the initial prototype; and IV) Redesign, including user experience workshops with 51 junior doctors.
RESULTS
Qualitative results informed the content and design of Shift to ensure the app was tailored to junior doctors’ needs. The Shift app prototype contained cognitive-behavioural, mindfulness, value-based actions, and psychoeducational modules, as well as a tracking function visualising patterns of daily variations in mood and health behaviours. Pilot testing revealed possible issues with the organisation of the app content, which were addressed in a thorough restructuring and redesign of Shift with the help of junior doctors across three user experience workshops.
CONCLUSIONS
The current research demonstrates the importance of ongoing end-user involvement in the creation of a specialised mHealth app for a unique working population experiencing profession-specific stressors and barriers to help-seeking. The development and pilot trial of this novel Shift mHealth app are first steps in addressing the mental health and support-seeking needs of junior doctors, although further research is required to validate its effectiveness and appropriateness on a larger scale.
