Your Wellbeing and Resilience
Whether you are an individual looking for support or a manager or hospice leader wanting to better support staff, this is where you can access ideas for reflection and resources.
As well as some links and ideas for maintaining wellbeing, you’ll find a series of helpful training videos and a checklist and framework, to assess resilience strategies for supporting staff and help with building your own.
About these resources
Our workforce is our most valuable asset. It is the people, that patients and families encounter, when they need hospice care that make the difference. Sustaining and retaining our much-appreciated workforce must be a priority.
In recognition of the impact of Covid-19 on working patterns and stress levels, during and now post-pandemic, Hospice UK has reviewed its resources for staff and organisations and is making workforce wellbeing and resilience more prominent on its website.
Wellbeing Strategies: Organisations & Individuals
Case studies and examples of initiatives taken by hospices as well as links to what might be interesting or useful either for you personally or for your organisation.
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'I am reopening the debate to explore reclaiming and reframing resilience' - read in Nursing Times
Self-care webinar - from Hospice UK
Online mental health tools - Mind
Self help CBT techniques - NHS
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About Schwartz Rounds - Point of Care Foundation
On the frontline: Looking after the staff who care for patients - Hospice UK
Workplace Bereavement Support - Compassionate Employers, Hospice UK
Resilience-Based Clinical Supervision Project
The Covid-19 pandemic has highlighted the importance of psychological health and wellbeing for all staff working in health and social care.
Health and social care workers are identified as potentially being at greater risk of experiencing both moral distress and moral injury as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic [1]. The King's Fund recommends “regular supportive supervision for all teams and individuals is needed so that their work can be sustained” [2].
There are, of course, many effective models of supervision or, as some prefer, reflective practice models. However, working in partnership with the Foundation of Nursing Studies (FoNS) Hospice UK is delighted to offer hospices, for a limited period only, a Resilience Based Clinical Supervision (RBCS) programme, which aims to build capacity to deliver greater access to supervision and support across the hospice sector.
We aim to complement and enhance existing regionally based wellbeing/supervision strategies thereby enabling wider access to supervision for more people.
Get involved with the project
We recognise that our workforce is our most valuable asset. The pandemic has taken its toll and this funded programme has given an opportunity to provide a model of supervision that focuses on the emotional wellbeing of all staff as well as sustainability of a compassionate service to patients and families.
Once initial facilitators have been trained, the RBCS model can be cascaded within your organisation enabling and empowering teams to offer peer-led sessions as and when appropriate. The model should complement any existing wellbeing strategies.
Contact us at clinical@hospiceuk.org to find out more information and to register your interest. Find out more about the programme.
The Resilience Framework
Building a resilient and thriving workforce is important to everyone, so we commissioned The Point of Care Foundation to examine the evidence and develop a framework for hospice leaders.
During and post the pandemic, Wellbeing Strategies couldn’t have been more important for hospices. We encourage organisations to review existing strategies and, in the light of new learning, look at this framework through a post-pandemic lens to consider whether the workplace is as supportive as it could be for staff.
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- hospices do differ from other health organisations but have a number of things in common;
- organisations should lead on developing and nurturing staff engagement;
- hospice staff do experience work-based stress but its level is no greater than that of staff working in other care environments;
- the majority of factors causing stress in the hospice workforce could be alleviated by good management practice;
- by actively supporting staff, organisations could reduce levels of employee stress, risk of burnout and compassion fatigue, and improve job satisfaction;
- more research is needed into the risk factors for staff burnout, to guide organisations in its prevention.
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This framework and checklist:
- describes the range of interventions available for leaders to respond to;
- identifies the two different types of stress: that associated with organisational life, management and organisational change; and the stress that comes with caring for patients at the end of their lives;
- will help senior leaders to create strategies that ensure they build a healthy and resilient workforce;
- will enable hospice leaders to support their staff and help them flourish in stressful times;
- will help ensure that boards receive annual reports on its use.
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Hospice UK recognises that the resilience of hospice workers is vital to the future of hospice care. Responsible hospice leaders also acknowledge that the most important asset we have to enable high quality care is our workforce, including both staff and volunteers.
To find out how to enable staff to perform well when under stress, we commissioned research which has enabled us to respond in a practical and sustainable way that is easy for hospice staff to engage with.
Explore the Resilience Framework (PDF).
Building Resilient People and Teams programme
We’ve created a series of webinars to provide resources for hospice leaders, helping them build their own resilience and that of their teams.
Author and Founder, and Chair of iOpener Institute Jess Pryce-Jones designed and delivered this series, which hospice leaders can access remotely and use in their workplace. The webinars offer a range of helpful strategies that can be adopted by hospice staff.
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- Learn more about how to develop a workforce that is motivated, healthy, and committed;
- Understand the concepts and practices that help to develop resilience;
- Learn techniques to enable you to take action that promotes these concepts and practices in your workplace;
- Have the opportunity to create an offline and online community and build a bank of useful resources as you go.
References
- Gillen P, Neill R D, Manthorpe J, et al. (2022) Decreasing wellbeing and increasing use of negative coping strategies: the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on the UK health and social care workforce. Epidemiologia 3: 26–39.
- Bailey, S and West, M. (2020) Covid 19: why compassionate leadership matters in a crisis; [Internet]. 2020 Mar 30 [cited 2023 Mar 13].