A protocol on the effects of interactive digital assistance on engagement and perceived quality of care of surgery patients and self-efficacy and workload of staff.

Introduction: The workforce shortage in the healthcare context is a growing issue that exerts detrimental effects on employees (e.g., higher workload) and patients (e.g., suboptimal patient care). Since traditional approaches alone may not be enough to solve this problem, there is a need for complementary innovative digital health solutions, such as socially assistive robots. Hence, the proposed study aims to investigate the effects of gamified nursing education and physiotherapy delivered by a socially assistive robot on patient- (engagement, perceived quality of care) and employee-related outcomes (perceived self-efficacy, workload). Methods and analysis: Approximately 90 vascular and thoracic surgery patients will receive either standard care or standard care with additional robot interactions over the course of 3-5 days. Additionally, approximately 34 nursing and physiotherapeutic employees will fill out self-report questionnaires after weeks of not using a social robot and weeks of using a social robot. The main hypotheses will be tested with mixed-design analyses of variance and paired-samples Discussion: While the proposed study has some limitations, the results will provide high-quality and comprehensive evidence on the effectiveness of socially assistive robots in healthcare. Ethics and dissemination: The study was approved by the Medical Ethics Commission of the University Medical Center and registered in the ISRCTN registry (ISRCTN96689284). The study findings will be summarized in international peer-reviewed scientific journals and meetings and communicated to relevant stakeholders.