Development of a Personalized Mobile Mental Health Intervention for Workplace Cyberbullying Among Health Practitioners: Protocol for a Mixed Methods Study

BACKGROUND: Workplace cyberbullying harms the psychological and social functioning of professionals working in an organization and may decrease the productivity and efficiency of daily life tasks. A recent study on trainee doctors across 8 different United Kingdom National Health Service trusts found health issues and job dissatisfaction in people who have experienced workplace cyberbullying. This disabling effect is even more noticeable in low-socioeconomic communities within low-income countries. In Malaysia, there is a need to create a personalized mobile mental health intervention program for health care professionals. These programs should be directed to prevent and decrease psychosocial issues and enhance coordination among health care professionals to solve health issues in the community.

OBJECTIVE: Our main objective is to study the pre-effects and posteffects of the Personalized Mobile Mental Health Intervention (PMMH-I) for workplace cyberbullying in public and private hospitals in Malaysia.

METHODS: A hospital-based multimethod multi-analytic evidential approach is proposed, involving social and psychological health informatics. The project has been subdivided into 3 stages, starting with Phase 1, a prevalence study, followed by exploratory studies. Phase 2 consists of a quasi-experimental design, whereas the development of a prototype and their testing will be proposed in Phase 3. Each stage includes the use of quantitative and qualitative methods (mixed-method program), using SPSS (version 26.0; IBM Corp) and Stata (version 16.1; StataCorp) as tools for quantitative research, and NVivo (version 1.0; QSR International) and Atlas.ti (version 9.0.16; ATLAS.ti Scientific Software Development GmbH) for qualitative research.

RESULTS: The results of this study will determine the pre- and posteffectiveness of an integrated PMMH-I for health care professionals. The prototype system platform will be developed and implemented in a public and private hospital. Results from Phase 1 will be published in 2021, followed by the implementation of Phase 2 in subsequent years.

CONCLUSIONS: This study will provide evidence and guidance regarding the implementation of a personalized mobile mental health intervention for health care professionals into routine public and private hospitals to enhance communication and resolve conflicts.

INTERNATIONAL REGISTERED REPORT IDENTIFIER (IRRID): PRR1-10.2196/23112.