About the project:
Healthcare providers, including physicians, nurses, medical/nursing students, clinical staff, and non-clinical workers, are experiencing substantial levels of burnout. Compounding these staggering statistics is the significant shortage of public health workers today, precisely when we need to strengthen the public health system to defend against future outbreaks and pandemics. It
is without question that health worker burnout is a serious threat to both the nation's health and economic security. Burnout prevention among our health workforce is one of the most significant public health challenges of our time, and it is imperative that we fully understand its root causes, develop and test both individual and systems-level interventions, and scale up best practices and evidence programs. The purpose of this project is to use the expertise of our interdisciplinary team of experts from the Altruism in Medicine Institute (AIMIcare), myBliss, and George Washington University School Of Public Health to conduct a feasibility study and formative evaluation of the implementation of the AIMIcare mobile application among healthcare workers in the U.S.
AIMIcare is a mobile application to prevent or reduce burnout to address the stressors associated with the healthcare field. The program provides multimedia content, including a personal journal, peer chat rooms, guided audio, and meditations. AIMIcare seeks to create a more positive outlook through emotional hygiene, mindfulness, and more. The guided audios teach stress reduction techniques, including compassion, resilience, positive emotions, and meditation, to notice feelings of stress and burnout early on. Their informative programs include the topics of well-being, setting intentions, overcoming stress, mindfulness, meditation, healthy self-confidence, facing death, emotional hygiene, and compassion training. AIMIcare also offers a Continuing Nursing Education (CNE) or a Continuing Medical Education (CME) credit course titled Burnout Prevention: Compassionate Mindfulness.
If we can show, as we expect, that (1) participants who receive AIMIcare will report acceptability and satisfaction with the program and (2) participants who receive AIMIcare will report significantly better outcomes, then we will have not only developed and evaluated the efficacy of a critical prevention tool, but we will also have developed an important model that will allow us to extend this intervention to target larger groups of healthcare workers across the U.S., in order to reduce the prevalence and incidence of burnout.
AIMIcare Team
Amita Vyas (faculty)
Amita N. Vyas, PhD, MHS, is a tenured Associate Professor at the George Washington
University (GW) School of Public Health and Director of the MPH Maternal and Child Health
program and the Center of Excellence in Maternal and Child Health. Dr. Vyas is the Founder of
the Global India Fund, an Executive Member and co-founder of the State Department's U.S.-
India Alliance for Women's Economic Empowerment, and a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the
Atlantic Council. In 2014, Dr. Vyas joined Girl Rising, Co-Produced the Girl Rising India film,
and served on its Board of Directors until 2020.
Barry Kerzin (faculty)
Barry Kerzin is an American physician and Buddhist monk. He has lived in Dharamshala, India
since 1988 and serves as a personal physician to the 14th Dalai Lama, along with treating people
in the local community. Kerzin is an adjunct professor at the University of Pittsburgh School
of Medicine and the founder and president of the Altruism in Medicine Institute (AIMI).
Carolyn Brown-Kaiser (student)
Carolyn is an MPH Candidate at George Washington University's Milken Institute School of
Public Health and a Graduate Research Assistant for the Maternal and Child Health Center of
Excellence.Carolyn intends to deepen her understanding of the social determinants of health and
apply this knowledge to the real world. Inspired and informed by the reproductive justice
framework, she is driven to address the many health inequities persisting both in the U.S. and
globally.