The Efficacy of the iWork.COMP Among Health Care Professionals

Summary

According to the literature, the prevalence of anxiety, depression, and/or burnout symptoms among healthcare workers is high. There are several factors than can, directly or indirectly, be related to these symptoms, being the leadership styles one of them. Toxic leadership, as a form of malicious leadership, has been shown to negatively impact the mental health and wellbeing of the workforce, through the adoption of dysfunctional behaviour and/or the presence of deviant personality traits (psychopathic, Machiavellianism, narcissistic) in leaders. Despite its relevance, there is an absence of studies on the efficacy of intervention programs aimed to reduce the impact of toxic leadership styles in the workplace, namely among health care professionals. Compassion Focused Therapy (CFT) is considered an effective therapeutic approach for the rehabilitation of individuals with several psychopathological symptoms/disorders (e.g., anxiety, stress, burnout, and deviant personality traits) and for the establishment of healthy relationships with friends, family, and coworkers. In the workplace, CFT-based interventions have been shown to promote employees' wellbeing, through the reduction of stress and burnout symptoms and improvement of healthy and compassionate interpersonal relationships. It is thus mandatory to develop and test cost-effectiveness CFT-based intervention programs able to mitigate the impact of toxic leadership styles in the workforce, promoting compassionate workplaces in health care systems.

To fulfil this gap, this clinical trial intends to develop and preliminarily test the efficacy of a short-term and low-time consuming internet delivery CFT-based intervention (iWork.COMP) specifically designed to mitigate the impact of toxic leadership styles through the development of compassionate motivation among health care professionals. Following a Randomized Controlled Trial, with 200 participants allocated to either a treatment group (TG) or a waiting-list control group (WLCG), it is hypothesized that the iWork.COMP will reduce the impact of toxic leadership styles, deviant traits and burnout symptoms among the TG when compared with the WLCG. Moreover, we expect that the iWork.COMP will promote wellbeing and a compassionate motivation among the TG when compared with the WLCG.

Conditions

• Toxic Leadership Styles

Interventions

BEHAVIORAL

iWork.Comp

The iWork.COMP is a short-term and low-time consuming internet delivery CFT-based intervention specifically designed to mitigate the impact of toxic leadership styles through the development of compassionate motivation in the workforce of EU hospitals. The iWork.COMP encompasses 8 individual sessions (20 minutes each; mixed format including text, audio and video presentations), which will be available weekly for participants at the KEEPCARING website (https://keepcaring.eu). Each session has three parts. Part 1 encompasses a brief check-in on the stress level of the participant at that moment and on the source of their stress (if applicable). In Part 2, the theme of the session is developed. Finally, Part 3 encompasses a brief check-in on the stress level of the participant at the end of the session and on the usefulness of the session; an optional open question to provide feedback will also be displayed.

Sponsors & Collaborators

• European Union (Horizon Europe Programme)

  collaborator UNKNOWN

• University of Coimbra

  lead OTHER

Study Design

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Purpose

TREATMENT

Masking

SINGLE

Model

PARALLEL

Eligibility

Min Age

18 Years

Sex

ALL

Healthy Volunteers

Yes

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2026-06-01

Primary Completion

2026-10-31

Completion

2028-05-30

Countries

• Portugal

Study Locations