Using Intervention Mapping to Develop a Virtual Reality Intervention to Support COVID-19 Vaccination Among Black Families.

The COVID-19 pandemic shifted healthcare services on a global scale as professionals adapted their workflow and modified the way they delivered services (; ). Telehealth platforms were adopted as necessary tools for continuing healthcare access during lockdown periods and have demonstrated benefits and challenges for patients and providers (; ). Rapid and unpredictable changes in official telehealth guidance led to issues involving healthcare provision including missed appointments, patient wait lists, lack of telework policies, dissolution of work-life balance, and reduction of interactions between colleagues (). Interruptions in provider workflow impacted patient well-being within mental health treatment environments as understaffing due to exposure, illness, or mandated quarantining efforts restricted the amount of time available per patient, which reduced access to and thoroughness of suicide risk assessments (). Front-line healthcare providers also described experiencing high levels of uncertainty around public health best practices, inconsistent leadership communication, and dissonance between broader pandemic guidelines and the needs of specific patients (). These conditions were associated with reported increases in provider stress, anxiety, depression, and burnout levels (). As providers became increasingly disconnected from their patients, communities, and one another, and adjusted to new parameters of telework, the impact of pandemic-related stressors warranted a response. There was a need for collaboration and organization among clinical, administrative, and technological resources to create support systems that bolstered provider resilience and improved familiarity with existing available technology for remote clinical practice (). This transition to utilizing remote workplace technologies has similar demands on employees across a myriad of professional contexts, and therefore the process has shown to be improved by similar implementations of institutional support. These factors include technology skills training, strong team communication, positive workplace relationships, and department leadership that embraced a technology-oriented workplace culture (). In addition to bolstering technology literacy, these support systems also offered socially oriented coping tools to address acute and chronic provider distress. Programming with beneficial outcomes incorporated psychoeducation in developing effective personal coping strategies that participants would use individually, while also conducting learning experiences within a social context. This approach demonstrated outcome measures of increased sense of resiliency and quality of life indicators, as well as decreased perception of isolation and use of avoidance-based coping strategies (). Furthermore, when workshops included experiential components focused on mindfulness and self-care skills, measures showed decreases in depression scales () and increases in both resilience and empathy scales consistent with subjective self-reporting ().