Promoting mental health in intensive care unit onboarding: a consensus-based iterative development of a...

Area of Science:

• Medical Education
• Psychology
• Healthcare Management

Background:

• Intensive care unit (ICU) professionals experience significant psychological stress.
• Current mental health support in early training is underdeveloped and not aligned with modern health professions education.
• Recommendations for early psychosocial support integration into onboarding lack competency-based frameworks.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop a competency-based educational framework for ICU onboarding.
• Integrate mental health promotion into structured learning objectives.
• Address knowledge, reflection, and action domains for healthcare professionals.

Main Methods:

• Mixed-methods design combining consensus process and curricular mapping.
• Two-stage rapid consensus process with multidisciplinary experts.
• Mapping content to competency dimensions using principles of competency-based medical education and Miller's Pyramid.

Main Results:

• A competency-based framework with eight educational domains was developed.
• Domains include mental health relevance, ICU stressors, stress understanding, resilience, second victim phenomenon, support systems, self-reflection, and shared responsibility.
• Framework operationalized into competency levels for constructive alignment of learning objectives, teaching, and assessment.

Conclusions:

• The framework advances health professions education by operationalizing recommendations into actionable components.
• Supports constructive alignment in curriculum design for learning objectives, teaching, and assessment.
• Further implementation and evaluation studies are needed to assess impact on learning, behavior, and practice.