Resilience Training for First Responders in the Opioid Epidemic

NCT ID: NCT04929613

Last Updated: 2024-01-30

Basic Information

• Recruitment Status: COMPLETED
• Clinical Phase: NA
• Total Enrollment: 30 participants
• Study Classification: INTERVENTIONAL
• Study Start Date: 2017-10-24
• Study Completion Date: 2018-06-26

Brief Summary

First responders (law enforcement, firefighters, and emergency medical system personnel) are subjected to daily pressures from their duties with resultant compassion fatigue, burnout, anger, poor mental and physical health, maladaptive behavior, and sleep disturbance. The unprecedented heroin and opioid epidemic in West Virginia has accelerated the stresses as these first responders witness overdoses and overdose death on a frequent basis. The plight and suffering of children of the overdose victims is an additional overlooked element in the stress on the first responder community. The proposed project will deliver mindfulness-based resilience training to improve the mental and physical wellbeing, prevent compassion fatigue, burnout, and attrition of first responders and performance improvement by reducing predictable cognitive errors in the Charleston and Huntington areas and measure the effects of this training on this population using validated questionnaires and salivary cortisol before and after the training.

Detailed Description

West Virginia (WV) is in the midst of an unprecedented opioid and heroin epidemic with profound social, health, and economic consequences. This stress, especially among law enforcement officials (LEOs), is often experienced within a context of excessive anger, which decreases wellbeing and has the potential to negatively impact public wellbeing as well. These public safety personnel are often left to manage stress and anger in a cultural context that does not support help-seeking behavior and that encourages maladaptive coping mechanisms. Mindfulness-Based Resilience Training (MBRT) has demonstrated significant improvement in self-reported mindfulness, resilience, perceived operational and administrative stress, burnout, emotional intelligence, emotion regulation, mental and physical health, anger, fatigue, and sleep disturbance Introducing effective evidence-based training to first responders has the potential to improve well-being and decrease burnout and improve the performance of the people who protect the community. Should this hypotheses be confirmed, first responders in West Virginia will have an effective intervention to improve resilience, address perceived stress and burnout, and lead to greater mental and physical wellbeing in the face of unprecedented stresses associated with the opioid and heroin epidemic. This would enable this intervention to be scaled across the state among other populations of first responders in this unprecedented public health crisis.

First responders will be recruited from volunteers targeting leadership and thought leaders at the frontline from the three-county area, but primarily from the cities of Charleston and Huntington, to participate in one of two 2.5-day intensive MBRT training sessions. Each 2.5-day session will be coordinated with each agency to ensure maximum participation without disrupting work schedules. Up to 35 participants will participate in each cohort. This study aims to recruit 2 cohorts from the pool of first responders in the Cabell, Kanawha, and Putnam Counties area for a minimum of 50 participants and maximum of 70 participants. Self report measures will be conducted at time 0 (before the intervention), time 1 (after the 2.5-day intensive training), time 2 (4 weeks after the 2.5-day intensive training and after the week 4 remote/virtual booster training) and at time 3 (90 days after the initial intensive training).

Conditions

Compassion Fatigue; Burnout; Stress; Mindfulness

Study Design

• Allocation Method: NA
• Intervention Model: SINGLE_GROUP
• Primary Study Purpose: SUPPORTIVE_CARE
• Blinding Strategy: NONE

Study Groups

Mindfulness-Based Resilience Training

Designed to train participants in a number of experiential exercises evoking qualities of mindfulness: mental focus, sustained attention and personal and situational awareness. These exercises include versions of the body scan (body awareness exercise), sitting meditation, mindful movement, walking meditation, eating meditation, mindful martial arts exercises and other elements of mindfulness.

Group Type: EXPERIMENTAL

Mindfulness-Based Resilience Training

Intervention Type: BEHAVIORAL

2.5-day intensive MBRT training sessions.

Interventions

Mindfulness-Based Resilience Training

2.5-day intensive MBRT training sessions.

Intervention Type: BEHAVIORAL

Eligibility Criteria

Inclusion Criteria

• Current employment as a first responder
• West Virginia residency
• Availability/willingness to engage in a 2.5-day retreat style intervention on identified dates.

Exclusion Criteria

• Not an actively employed first responder
• Does not currently reside in WV
• Not willing or able to participate

• Minimum Eligible Age: 18 Years
• Eligible Sex: ALL
• Accepts Healthy Volunteers: Yes

Sponsors

West Virginia University

OTHER

Sponsor Role: lead

Responsible Party

Responsibility Role: SPONSOR

Principal Investigators

Keith Zullig, PhD

Role: PRINCIPAL_INVESTIGATOR

West Virginia University

Locations

Kanawha-Charleston Health Department

Charleston, West Virginia, United States

Saint John XXIII Pastoral Center

Charleston, West Virginia, United States

Marshall University

Huntington, West Virginia, United States

West Virginia University

Morgantown, West Virginia, United States

Countries

United States

Provided Documents

Document Type: Study Protocol and Statistical Analysis Plan

View Document

Other Identifiers

1704554931

Identifier Type: -

Identifier Source: org_study_id