Staff at Lancashire Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust are promoting a national campaign this month to help colleagues to relieve their stress.
Stress Awareness Month takes places annually throughout April and is a national campaign which aims to increase awareness of the causes of stress, how stress can be addressed, and promote what support is available to help to relieve stress.
To promote the month, the health and wellbeing team at Lancashire Teaching Hospitals will be sharing advice and ideas with staff through themed wellbeing walls across the hospitals and tips, informational stalls across all sites, and advice shared on social media such as how to stay hydrated, practice deep breathing and get a good night’s sleep. Stress-busting activities will continue to be offered across the hospitals too; including mindfulness half-hour drop-in sessions, a staff choir; drawing sessions offered to staff and students via the library services, and yoga sessions.
Stress can affect people in a variety of different ways; making people feel overwhelmed, irritable, or anxious or causing physical effects such as headaches, dizziness, problems sleeping and loss of appetite to name just a few. Stress can affect anyone and can be caused by anything from work related issues, family problems, financial difficulties etcetera.
The dedicated health and wellbeing team provides access to activities and sessions to support staff who have extremely busy jobs providing care or services for patients. This includes numerous activities from yoga classes, walking challenge, mindfulness classes, trips and excursions, and more.
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 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”.