Stress Awareness Week and Lancashire Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust raised awareness of the services available to staff to help relieve any stress that they may have.
Stress Awareness Week aims to help people to think about their wellbeing and find advice or support on managing stress. Lancashire Teaching Hospitals has a dedicated health and wellbeing team that provides access to activities and sessions to support staff who have extremely busy jobs providing care or services for patients.
The health and wellbeing team organise numerous activities such as walking challenges, craft sessions and yoga, as well as psychological wellbeing sessions, mindfulness classes, and physiotherapy sessions for staff. There is also a social club for staff to join which offers trips and excursions such as shopping trips, trips to the zoo, visits to the Christmas markets and more, to enable staff to socialise outside of work.
Earlier this year, the team also launched a Traumatic Incident Service which aims to provide support and guidance to staff who have experienced an incident at work that may have caused distress. The service enables individuals to have an opportunity to talk about their feelings following an incident, receive information about common experiences and where to access professional support if needed.
Rachel O’Brien, Strategic Workforce Business Partner and Lead for Health and Wellbeing at Lancashire Teaching Hospitals, said: “Health and wellbeing is extremely important to us at Lancashire Teaching Hospitals to ensure that our staff are receiving the best support possible from us. Our staff have very busy jobs and sometimes have to deal with difficult situations at work, so we aim to provide a range of activities to encourage them to look after their own wellbeing, and support them in their day to day jobs.”
“We have a huge variety of activities on offer to support staff with their physical health, including exercise groups, health checks, physiotherapy and smoking cessation advice; and looking after psychological health is equally as important. We have already introduced mindfulness training and a clinical psychology service and we’re really happy to have launched the Traumatic Incident Service which will be another way for our staff to receive the support that they need and deserve.”
“It is also important that our managers are aware of the signs of stress and are confident in supporting staff who are experiencing stress. We have introduced training on supporting health and wellbeing as part of our core management skills training and offer mental health first aid training too”.