Trinity Health Mid Atlantic Partnering with mental health software providers neuroflow last August to ease the health care burnout crisis provide that nurse We use technology from a Philadelphia-based startup. A year later, nurses using NeuroFlow had such a rapid and positive impact on their mental health that partners say more hospitals need to roll out such initiatives.
Independent Blue Cross Foundation The program was initiated at three Trinity Health Mid-Atlantic hospitals in Pennsylvania: Philadelphia’s Nazareth Hospital, Edon’s Mercy Fitzgerald Hospital, and Langhorne’s St. Mary’s Medical Center. The initiative has given over 1,800 nurses access to her Neuroflow app. It provides self-guided care for maintaining good mental health.
About 20% of nurses eligible for the program signed up for the app, according to a Trinity and Neuroflow case study. These nurses use the app to get screened for depression, record daily insights such as sleep patterns and mood scores, log their experiences in a diary, and provide educational content on how to deal with mental health issues. was accessed.
NeuroFlow measures the health of Trinity Health nurses World Health Organization 5 Wellbeing Index (WHO-5) RatingThis short self-assessment measures an individual’s health on a scale of 1 to 100. 100 represents the best possible health. The use of this assessment was chosen “very deliberately,” said Matt Miclette, Neuroflow’s vice president of clinical operations, in an interview.
Miclet, who is a registered nurse herself, believes that the standard tool for depression screening is Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ)He said providers know PHQ like the back of their hand. This has been in use for so long that patients have come to expect these sorts of questions from their primary care provider and know how to answer them without raising alarms.
Neuroflow’s platform chooses WHO-5 instead. WHO-5 uses less clinical terminology. Miclette said Neuroflow first found that WHO-5 was more effective at screening for mental health issues during startup testing. program with the military.
“The WHO-5 isn’t just a measure of depression, it’s actually a measure of happiness,” he said. “The difference is that you can actually use this to find out not only if someone has depression, but also if they’re fine and doing well at work.”
In Trinity’s program, 29% of nurses evaluated had scores indicating poor health. At the end of the nine-month case study, nurses with the lowest WHO-5 scores had significantly improved well-being scores.
for example, Clinically significant 53% of nurses with WHO-5 scores below 50 (range indicating feeling unwell or possibly depressed) achieved scores of 10 or higher after 90 days experienced significant improvement. After 4 to 8 months, 79% of nurses who initially scored below her 50 improved her score by 10 or more.
Informed by combining nurses’ WHO-5 scores with user data, Neuroflow prompted nurses to tailor interventions 39 times over nine months. According to Miclette, these interventions actively supported Trinity nurses by triaging them to the right level of care and preventing potential behavioral health crises.
For Miclette, the main reason Trinity nurses love Neuroflow’s app is the flexibility built into mental health care. The nurse enjoyed being able to select from her preferred settings and complete wellness activities such as meditation and guided breathing in her 5-minute intervals.
“Nurses’ shifts are long and sometimes they most want to avoid going back to another healthcare setting after their hospital duty is over,” he said. “This app provides an opportunity for people to think about their mental health outside the workplace and work on it at home.”
Photo: Antonio Guillem, Getty Images
