One in two medical students report high burnout and one in three experience elevated depression. Many stressful experiences for medical students occur on placement, including exposure to dying patients and death; fear over making medical errors and involvement in errors and dilemmas concerning decisions about patient care. Placement-related stress has been further increased by the Covid-19 pandemic, but no intervention currently exists to prepare and support medical students with placement-related stressors.
Reboot-Med will address this gap by adapting and evaluating Reboot (Recovery-BOOsting Coaching Programme), a coaching intervention which has been linked with increased confidence and resilience in multidisciplinary healthcare professionals and students. Phase 1 will conduct focus groups with medical students, newly qualified doctors and medical educators to explore how Reboot should be adapted for medical students. Phase 2 will evaluate the adapted Reboot intervention with medical students, assessing whether it improves confidence, depression, burnout and psychological resilience. It will also be assessed via qualitative interviews, which will explore participants’ experiences of the intervention in more depth.
Reboot-Med has been funded by the British Medical Association. The Principal Investigator is Dr Judith Johnson and the Co-Principle Investigator is Dr William Lea. Co-Investigators include Dr Ruth Simms-Ellis, Professor Rebecca Lawton, Dr Luke Budworth, Associate Professor Reema Harrison and Nicola Howard.