Wellbeing is a term that seems to be everywhere these days, in the media and in the high street, and is frankly often used willy nilly and without proper context or meaning.
Sadly, I feel its importance for clinicians is still woefully neglected despite your own wellbeing as nurses and midwives, as staff and as people, being so incredibly important.
“At Nursing Times we hear a lot of stories from staff who write about the challenges they are facing and how it affects their lives”
Rightly, the emphasis in health and social care is on patient wellbeing but you can’t have that without staff wellbeing as well, in my view.
That’s why I was very happy to be asked to take part in a webinar earlier this week on the wellbeing of nursing and midwifery staff.
The event, titled Who cares for our nurses? How can they become healthier and happier?, also involved speakers from the Florence Nightingale Foundation, Nuffield Health and Nurse Lifeline.
I used part of my presentation to explain how at Nursing Times we hear a lot of stories from staff who write about the challenges they are facing and how it affects their lives.
Just as importantly, we also hear how people deal with these challenges. Some say they use tools like reflection to process situations, some try to soldier on using that controversial word ‘resilience’ as a shield, and others are clearly, simply made ill or upset by them.
There are, of course, many factors that negatively affect staff wellbeing, many personal to the individual involved. However, right now, two major issues are seemingly affecting most people.
Workforce, or put another way, workload, driven by staff shortages is probably the big one. Although the actual NHS workforce is growing, it is not doing so rapidly enough to meet demand and that’s without mentioning social care and other sectors.
Staff shortages were a problem before Covid-19 and are even worse due to retirement bubbles. For example, people delaying retirement to help with the pandemic or bringing it forward afterwards due to having had enough.
There is also the impact of long Covid, for example, and burnout more generally; all affected too by the pressure to catch up on routine procedures and referrals, and the annual winter pressures that never truly go away. Basically, as I have said before, we have a workforce crisis.
But that has now been joined by the cost-of-living crisis, that is to say the fall in ‘real’ disposable incomes, which appears to be having an impact on physical and mental health.
A recent survey of 8,000 UK adults by Nuffield Health found the majority of respondents thought the cost-of-living crisis has had a negative impact on their physical health (60%) and mental health (59%) in the past year.
The Nuffield Health’s Healthier Nation Index revealed that most respondents named the cost-of-living crisis as having the biggest impact on the nation’s overall health (63%), followed by lack of physical activity (46%) and lack of mental health support (38%).
Although a problem affecting most of the country, it is of course complicated by the well-publicised decade of below-inflation pay rises for NHS staff that has partly led to the current industrial action.
I am sure neither of these two crises that I have mentioned as damaging to nurse wellbeing will come as a surprise and, as I said, people’s wellbeing is an individual thing that is affected by individual micro factors as well as these macro factors.
Though I think the key point for me is that one affects wellbeing at work and the other at home, so it’s a double whammy for nursing and midwifery staff right now.
“Our latest results suggested that nurse mental health not only remains a serious cause for concern but also that it is, for many, worse now than ever before”
I used the second part of my presentation to highlight our Are You OK? campaign, which we started in 2020 to support nurse wellbeing during the early months of the pandemic, but which we have continued, reflecting the fact that pressure on staff has continued.
The impact of this ongoing challenge was evidenced by a snapshot survey of almost 1,000 people, conducted by Nursing Times in January, to take stock of how nursing staff in the UK are feeling.
Our latest results suggested that nurse mental health not only remains a serious cause for concern, but also that it is, for many, worse now than ever before.
We found that 40% of nursing staff said their mental health was worse than it was during the peaks of the Covid-19 pandemic, with concerns about staffing levels, patient safety and personal finances cited as key issues negatively affecting their wellbeing.
To summarise, it’s not good news. The situation appears to be getting worse with wellbeing and how staff perceive it. Employers and the government ignore this at their peril.
However, it must be acknowledged that there are lots of organisations that are trying to do their best to support staff and their wellbeing. That is something we in turn want to support through the Nursing Times Workforce Awards.
We have a specific category for Best Staff Wellbeing Initiative that was won last year by the Royal Free NHS Foundation Trust. So, if your employer is doing good stuff, then please enter the awards.
But I would like to emphasise again that I do not think you can have great patient care without supporting staff wellbeing too. The two go hand-in hand and that must be recognised.