Evaluating the Effectiveness of Multifaceted Implementation Strategies for Implementing a Guideline for the Prevention of Common Mental Disorders at the Workplace in Schools

Karolinska Institute

Status: Completed

Conditions: Common Mental Disorders

Treatments: Behavioral: Single implementation strategy; Behavioral: Multifaceted implementation strategies

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT03322839

150571 (Other Grant/Funding Number)

Details and patient eligibility

About

Given today's high prevalence of common mental disorders and related sick leave among teachers an urgent need exists for a more sustainable working life for this professional group. One way of doing this is by improving schools' social and organizational risk management. Recent reports have shown that many schools in Sweden however lack a structured approach to the management of social and organizational risks. In 2015, we launched the first Swedish occupational health guideline to support a structured prevention of social and organizational risks at the workplace with the aim of preventing common mental disorders. The long-term goal of this study is to support the implementation of this guideline within schools in order to improve social and organizational risk management and in doing so reduce risk factors for mental ill-health and related sick days. The objective of the study is to fill the current research-to-practice gap by conducting a cluster-randomized controlled trial that compares the effectiveness of two implementation strategies for implementing the guideline in schools. The strategies that will be compared are training (ARM 1) versus training in combination with implementation teams and workshops (ARM 2). Our hypothesis for the study is that schools that receive support in implementing the guideline through combined strategies are more responsive to working in a structured and systematic manner with the management of social and organizational risks than schools that only receive training. The trial will be conducted in 20 primary schools in two municipalities in Sweden. All schools have agreed to participate. The primary outcomes are adherence to the guideline (implementation effectiveness) and self-reported exhaustion among schools personnel (intervention effectiveness); the secondary outcomes are risk factors for mental ill-health and absenteeism. Data will be collected at baseline, 6, 12 and 24 months by mixed methods (i.e. survey, focus-group interviews, observation, and register-data).

Enrollment: 732 patients

Sex: All

Volunteers: Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• all individuals who are employed by the participating schools

Exclusion criteria

• individuals employed by the participating municipalities and not by the participating schools, for example cleaning personal. Individuals on sick-leave

Trial design

Primary purpose: Prevention

Allocation: Randomized

Interventional model: Parallel Assignment

Masking: None (Open label)

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732 participants in 2 patient groups

Multifaceted implementation strategies

Experimental group

Description:

The school-management will participate in a one-day training. In addition each intervention school will form an implementation team that is responsible for the implementation of the guideline within their school. The implementation teams will participate in 4-5 workshops in order to support the implementation process.

Treatment:

Behavioral: Multifaceted implementation strategies

Single implementation strategy

Active Comparator group

Description:

The control-schools will only receive training to the school-management.

Treatment:

Behavioral: Single implementation strategy