DISCovery: tailored work-oriented interventions to improve employee health and performance-related outcomes in health care

Due to all kinds of new organizational challenges and threats, health care workers in today's hospitals have to deal with high levels of job demands (e.g. mental, emotional and physical workload), which could have negative effects on their health and job performance. To diminish job-related stress-reactions and to optimize employee performance, revolutionary thinking on the application of job resources and recovery opportunities to deal with todays job demands is badly needed. De Jonge and Dormann (2003; 2006) proposed such a groundbreaking revolution in their model on job stress and learning, called the Demand-Induced Strain Compensation (DISC) Model. The overall aim of this intervention study is to compose and implement effective, tailored, interventions to improve a healthy working life, job performance and patient safety in health care, based on the innovative principles of the DISC model. In line with the DISC Model, the core question is how different types of job resources and recovery at/after work (i.e. cognitive, emotional, or physical) correspond to job demands over different time courses to predict employee health and performance-related outcomes. Because a systematic and theory-driven analysis of work-related risk factors is often lacking in stress intervention research, a first strength of the present study is the adequate diagnosis of specific risk factors (high demands, lack of adequate resources, lack of adequate recovery) with both a paper-and-pencil survey and a daily survey (i.e. diary study). A second strength is that health care employees will participate in the development and implementation of the interventions. This will be done according to the principles of Participatory Action Research (PAR). Further, a meta-analysis of stress management interventions showed that only a few studies assessed the impact of work-oriented interventions in a scientifically justified way. Hence, a third strength of the study is the use of primarily work-oriented interventions, which will be followed by two successive survey waves (i.e. short-term and long-term effects). A fourth strength of this study is the comparison of different interventions on respective, similar, outcomes, which appears to be an important contribution to both theory and practice. Finally, the infrastructure of three different locations of the participating health care organization makes an high-quality intervention study with comparison groups possible. To increase the quality of health care and to reduce costs, hospitals need to work more and more efficient than ever before. In this respect, Human Resources strategies to keep current staff in house and to ensure longer employment are badly needed. The final aim of this intervention study is to help all parties involved to improve their performance in terms of safer and better care. To conclude, this project is highly relevant for the ZonMW program 'Participation & Health' as it is aimed at the systematic, theory-driven, development and implementation of tailored work-oriented interventions in health care, based upon an innovative job stress model and adequate diagnoses, using a high-quality design and sophisticated statistical analyses. The implementation goal following this project includes the substantial involvement of stakeholders, as well as the dissemination and embeddedness of findings of the study in health care practice.