Inside the KEEPCARING Clinical Studies

Healthcare professionals across European hospitals face mounting workplace pressure, emotional strain, and systemic stress. These challenges directly compromise staff well-being, weaken workforce resilience, and jeopardize patient care quality. Addressing this critical issue requires more than quick fixes; it demands evidence-based, scalable solutions built for real-world clinical environments.

The six KEEPCARING Clinical Studies

To address stress from every angle, the KEEPCARING clinical trials test tailored interventions in high-stakes hospital environments:

Study A – Mapping Resilience Factors (University of Limerick): Investigates bio-psycho-social risk and protective factors among hospital doctors and nurses. Using validated psychometric scales, qualitative feedback, and non-invasive biobehavioural monitoring, this cross-sectional study tracks how stress and resilience register in physiological responses.

Study B – VR Therapy Before Surgery (Amsterdam UMC): Evaluates whether deep relaxation via Virtual Reality (VR) headsets before entering the operating room reduces acute stress. Participants act as their own controls, comparing VR relaxation against standard low-stimulus time-out periods to measure effectiveness in high-pressure surgical settings

Study C – VR Relaxation on Surgical Wards (Amsterdam UMC): Shifts VR deep relaxation interventions from the operating theater directly to active surgical wards. Using mixed quantitative and qualitative methods, it evaluates user satisfaction, stress reduction, and practical feasibility during daily hospital shifts.

Study D – Data-Driven Post-Surgery Debriefings (Rigshospitalet, Copenhagen): Explores how data from the "Operating Room Black Box"—which captures video and audio during surgery—can enhance team debriefings. By comparing data-driven reflections with traditional debriefings, the study aims to strengthen psychological safety, communication, and team learning.

Study E – Team-Level Job Crafting (Erasmus University Rotterdam): Focuses on collective workload redesign. Combining daily diary tracking with structured team interventions, healthcare teams learn to redistribute job demands and resources collectively, shifting the focus from individual coping to structural workplace design.

Study F – Mitigating Toxic Leadership with iWork.COMP (University of Coimbra): Tests a web-delivered intervention rooted in Compassion Focused Therapy. Designed for both staff and leaders, this low-intensity program delivers online sessions and guided exercises to improve emotional regulation, lower burnout, and mitigate destructive workplace dynamics.

Validating digital health for real-world impact

For digital health innovations to succeed in European healthcare ecosystems, clinical effectiveness must go hand-in-hand with regulatory compliance, robust data security, and seamless workflow integration. The KEEPCARING studies demonstrate how technology—ranging from immersive VR devices to AI-supported OR Black Boxes—can be safely and effectively deployed inside demanding hospital workflows.

By grounding the KEEPCARING Change Management Platform in multi-center clinical trial data, the consortium ensures that digital interventions deliver measurable improvements in staff retention, well-being, and patient safety. As the project progresses, these studies will offer vital insights for scaling compliant, human-centered health tech across Europe.

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