Encouraging self-care by promoting the Provider Resilience mobile application: Student impressions and usage patterns

Abstract

In an effort to encourage self-care through a wide variety of means, 61 MSW students were asked to download the Provider Resilience mobile application (PRMA), as part of their coursework, and use it at least five times over a two-week period.  At the end of this period, they were asked to write their impressions about this application and the perceived value to their overall level of resilience and self-care.  Students were asked to consider the accuracy of their overall resilience rating and their scores for compassion satisfaction, burnout, and secondary traumatic stress, as well as comment on the perceived value of ratings and other tools in the app that are designed to increase awareness and resilience.  Participants were asked which of these sections they used and which were the most useful to them.  Finally, as a part of their end of course evaluation, students were asked to estimate how many times they used the PRMA on their own in the 6 weeks after their assignment was turned in.  Slightly over a third (38%) of the students had used the app again, but for those who continued using the PRMA, the mean number of times used was 3.36, suggesting that some students found this a useful tool for increasing their resilience and supporting one of the secondary objectives of the assignment.  While this is only preliminary work, findings suggest further exploration of incorporating resilience promoting technologies in the classroom may have some merit.