Recovery at your fingertips: pilot study of an mHealth intervention for work-related stress among nursing students

Abstract Background Work-related stress is detrimental to individual health and incurs substantial social costs. Interventions to tackle this problem are urgently needed, with mHealth solutions being a promising way of delivering accessible and standardized interventions on a wide scale. This study pilot tests a low-intensive mHealth intervention designed to mitigate the negative consequences of stress through promoting recovery strategies. Methods Nursing school students ( N = 16) used the intervention for a month. Data were collected immediately before, immediately after, and one month after the end of the intervention. Additionally, intensive longitudinal data were collected daily during the time of the intervention. Primary outcome measures include recruitment and retention rates, engagement with and acceptability of the intervention, as well as evaluating the quality of measurement instruments. Results Recruitment and retention rates provide a benchmark that we need to invite 10–12 times the intended target sample size. Engagement and acceptability metrics are promising overall, showing key areas that need to be adapted to improve the intervention. Measurement quality is acceptable with instruments mostly functioning as intended. Conclusion Results show that the intervention and study protocol are feasible for conducting a randomized controlled trial given a few adjustments. The randomization algorithm needs to match the sample size in order to allocate evenly distributed experimental groups. Acceptability of the intervention may be improved through adapting the recommended recovery strategies. Some additional outcome measures are suggested to provide a more comprehensive picture of intervention effects. Trial registration NCT06228495. Registered retrospectively 01/10/2024.