WeCare - Mental healthcare for health professionals

Mental health till today is underrated even tabooed still, even though it can have tremendous impact on physical health and is a main factor of (long-term) sick leaves. We applied for this project because of the longstanding need for mental health support of health professionals, i.e. people, working on the front line of the healthcare system like nurses and doctors, who experience high stress levels due to the nature of their profession and working environment. Long before the Covid-19 crisis this need has been identified throughout Europe but little to no efforts have been made to tackle this important issue. Often healthcare professionals work under stressful conditions like shift work and in difficult and demanding surroundings. These people who care for others often forget about themselves, which leads to unhealthy coping mechanisms to deal with stress and subsequently own illness as a result of permanent high stress levels. Therefore, we wanted to create a tool to assist them in taking care of their own mental health, taking into account their difficult working conditions, to keep the threshold of using the tool low. Therefore, we opted for a mobile app.

Before the project, measures to support the mental health of healthcare professionals had a high threshold. There are courses available that you have to sign up for and attend for example as measures of employers in the framework of occupational health. All measures we found needed some extra time, which the employee has to find first. We wanted to create a simple tool, a pocket friend that becomes a daily companion and is easily accessible and usable. Based on the experience of our consortium members who have worked in the healthcare system themselves, we wanted to create something that really caters to the needs of healthcare professionals, that is created with them for them. Also we wanted to raise awareness about the need for such measures for healthcare professionals but also for other professions that work under similar conditions.