Edu:Social Health Care Project Phase II is a non-randomized waitlist-controlled trial with sequential recruitment of the intervention and waitlist control groups (nrWLC), designed to evaluate the effects of a partner-based Dyad-based empathy-compassion mental training (EmCo) intervention on healthcare professionals with regard to following primary outcome domains: 1) mental health, 2) resilience, 3) social cohesion and support, 4) social skills, 5) coping and emotion regulation, and 6) social behaviors.
One main goal is to examine the effects of such adapted 8-week EmCo Dyad intervention within the health care context, with a particular focus on strengthening healthcare professionals' mental health, resilience, social skills and behaviors, and social cohesion as well as fostering interprofessional attitudes by pairing every week study partners across different healthcare disciplines with each other for practicing their daily Dyads (e.g., nurses will practice daily via app with medical doctors or midwives).
A further aim is to validate the novel Dyad Voice Assessment (DYVA) task, which explores the use of app-based voice recordings as indicators of healthcare professionals' emotional states during their daily partner-based Dyad practice. By combining healthcare professionals' self-reported practice-related emotions with partner-based evaluations, this approach aims to generate new and innovate, more objective markers of training-induced changes in emotional processing and regulation over time in a real-live applied setting.
The final aim is to investigate the cognitive and affective mechanisms and factors underlying observed changes in healthcare professionals' mental health, resilience, social cohesion, social skills and social behaviors, that may explain observed training-related effects in primary outcome domains. Based on previous research, we expect the socio-emotional EmCo Dyad training to activate evolutionary old care- and affiliation-based motivational systems that foster positive affect and motivation, acceptance, trust social capacities and behavioral tendencies. These processes should go along with reduction in loneliness, stress and other mental vulnerabilities (anxiety, depression, burn-out etc.) and foster social skills such as empathy, compassion as well as social cohesion and resilience.
Between 18- and 65-years old.
Currently practicing a healthcare profession in Germany or Austria 2a. Belongs to one of the eligible state-regulated professions with legally defined independent responsibility for patient care, including diagnosis, treatment, psychotherapy, maternity care, or the overall nursing process (e.g., physician, psychotherapist, midwife, or registered nurse).
Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9 ; Martin et al., 2006 ; Löwe et al., 2004 ; Cutoff ≥ 15 ; or endorsing suicidality on the item 9),
Generalized Anxiety Disorder-7 (GAD-7; Löwe et al., 2007; Spitzer et al., 2006; Cutoff ≥ 15)
Toronto Alexithymia Scale-20 (TAS-20; Bagby et al., 1994; Ritz & Kannapin, 2000; Cutoff ≥ 61)
Standardized Assessment of Personality - Abbreviated Scale (SAPAS; Moran et al., 2003; Söchtig et al., 2012, Cutoff ≥ 4).