Strengthening Health Literacy in Healthcare Workers Through Mind Body Medicine and Nutrition

This participatory research study at University Medicine Essen aims to develop, implement, and evaluate a workplace health program to improve stress resilience and mental well-being among healthcare workers. Increasing stress, staff shortages, and high rates of sick leave negatively impact both employees and patient care, making a comprehensive and sustainable health program essential. To ensure the intervention meets employees' needs, the study is guided by a steering committee consisting of hospital staff from various departments, including occupational health management, sustainability management, reintegration services, and the nonscientific staff council. A preliminary needs assessment will be conducted through focus groups, allowing employees to provide input on key aspects such as session format, duration, and content. Furthermore, the intervention design will be tested in a pilot phase to ensure the design is feasible and accepted by the participants.

The intervention will be a multimodal program combining mind-body medicine techniques, complementary self-care, and psycho-biotic nutrition to enhance stress resilience and overall health. Mind-body medicine includes mindfulness and stress management techniques, while complementary self-care will focus on easily applicable techniques from Traditional European Medicine (TEM) and Traditional Indian Medicine (TIM). Psycho-biotic nutrition, based on the connection between gut health and mental well-being, aims to support emotional and cognitive health through dietary changes. The study will use a randomized controlled trial design, comparing an intervention group with a waitlist control group to evaluate effectiveness.

Beyond individual benefits, the study also seeks to identify workplace-level improvements by promoting mindfulness among employees and leadership regarding structural stressors. This includes optimizing communication, understanding one's thoughts and emotions, and improving workplace policies such as break structures to better support employee well-being. By integrating feedback from the needs assessment and the pilot phase, the study aims to develop a sustainable and evidence-based health program that can be incorporated into routine workplace health management at University Medicine Essen. If successful, the intervention will serve as a model for other healthcare institutions and may be implemented more broadly within the healthcare sector.

• Burnout [Срок оценки: Week 10]
• Stress Coping [Срок оценки: Week 10]
• Stress Symptoms [Срок оценки: Week 10]
• Physical Resilience [Срок оценки: Week 10]
• Mental Well-Being [Срок оценки: Week 10]
• Psychological Distress [Срок оценки: Week 10]
• Health Behaviour Change [Срок оценки: Week 10]
• Adverse Events [Срок оценки: From enrollment to the end of treatment at week 10]
• Stress Resilience [Срок оценки: Week 26]
• Burnout [Срок оценки: Week 26]
• Stress Coping Strategies [Срок оценки: Week 26]
• Stress Symptoms [Срок оценки: Week 26]