Nurses have been suffering from depression and burnout since long before the pandemic, but COVID put a spotlight on how hard health care workers have it.
The good news is that at-home, mobile app-based exercise reduced depressive symptoms and signs of burnout, in a randomized COPE trial.
The bad news is that it was difficult for participants to stick with the program.
After three months, the study’s exercise group experienced a “significant small to medium treatment effect” compared to participants in the control group, Eli Puterman and co-authors wrote in JAMA Psychiatry.
The nearly 300 health care workers who participated in the four 20-minute exercise sessions each week also showed decreased signs of cynicism and emotional exhaustion.
Researchers also saw a significant positive effect on absenteeism.
“As a result of the wide and growing effects of the pandemic on HCWs (health care workers), managing this mental health crisis is now a global imperative,” Puterman and team wrote. “Attention to occupational influences (e.g., work hours, contractual demands) is necessary to protect the workforce from loss of experienced HCWs.”
“There is also a pressing need to deliver innovative and scalable interventions that can directly mitigate depleted mental health among HCWs, because without such interventions, HCWs’ mental health and intention to leave their professions will worsen to a devastating level, causing a potentially irretrievable strain on our healthcare systems,” they added.
Puterman told MedPage Today: “The main takeaway is this idea that physical activity and exercise at home using apps can improve mental health and sick leaves over a period of time, and especially (for) those who really stick with the program.”
Unfortunately, many participants were unable to clock the full 80 minutes of exercise each week. In fact, between weeks two and 12, the number of participants meeting the goal dropped from 54.9% to 23.2%. By the final week, 26.1% of participants were exercising less than 20 minutes each week.
“Our work supports this conclusion that for people who can take up exercise with the simple free provision of a suite of apps, exercise can improve mental health,” Puterman said. “Yet, in our study, many did not find that our solution enabled them to maintain the minimum level of exercise to improve their mental health.”
“Almost all behavioral clinical interventions struggle with adherence,” he added. “In our study, there was a significant decline in those completing an average of 80 minutes per week over the 12 weeks. Yet, approximately 50% remained engaged with the apps to some extent, even if they did not meet the 80 minutes on average over the course of the trial.”
He told MedPage Today the results “show the importance of finding interventions to support healthcare workers who want to remain engaged in physical activity whether it is app-based or not.”
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