Background: Poor mental health in medical students is a global concern. Effective interventions are required, which are tailored towards the training-related stressors medical students experience. The Reboot coaching programme is an online, tailored intervention based on cognitive-behavioural principles.
Aims: To evaluate whether the Reboot coaching programme tailored for medical students was feasible and associated with improvements in mental health outcome indicators.
Methods: Medical students participated in two group online workshops and a one-to-one coaching call with a Reboot-trained licensed psychological therapist. Participants provided data at: baseline (T1), post-workshops (T2), post-coaching call (T3) and 4-month follow-up (T4). Outcome measures included resilience, confidence, burnout and depression. Feedback was provided regarding the workshops at T2.
Results: 115 participants (93/80.9% women; mage = 23.9; SD = 2.8) were recruited, 83 (72.2%) completed all intervention elements and 82 (71.3%) provided T4 data, surpassing recruitment and retention targets. There were significant improvements following baseline in resilience (ps < .001), confidence (ps < .001), burnout (ps < .001) and depression (ps ≤ .001). Most participants agreed the workshops imparted useful skills (n = 92; 99%) and would recommend Reboot to others (n = 89; 95.6%).
Conclusions: Existing interventions have produced mixed results regarding their effectiveness in improving medical students' mental health. Reboot is a feasible intervention in this group which is associated with improvements in resilience, confidence, burnout and depression. Further controlled studies of Reboot are now needed.
Keywords: Medical education; burnout; depression; medical students; resilience.