So… I have been developing my seminar presentation for this years NHS Expo 2015. I am so excited to be a part of this day and to present a seminar on an area I feel so passionate about. Please let me know if you will be there, I would love to network with others interested in healthier staff for healthier patients!
If you are booking your sessions for the day remember to book in for the pop up university session:
Workshop 20
Improving staff experience to improve performance
This session will be run in conjunction with colleagues from Coventry University and Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, and will focus on the impact staff engagement and experience has on organisational performance, specifically patient experience. The session is aimed at commissioners and policy makers, and will outline why staff experience is so important, as well as offer examples from an organisation has has improved staff experience to great effect.
Sally Pezaro (Centre for Technology Enabled Health Research (CTEHR), University of Coventry) and Rhian Bishop (Staff Engagement Lead at Sheffield Teaching Hospitals Foundation Trust).
Hope to see you there!
Quick note: I have also begun to recruit for my up and coming Delphi Study. Thank you so much to those who have already expressed their interest in joining the expert panel, and to those who have shared this recruitment information via social media (please keep sharing and remember to email me and express your own interest in joining!)
So in preparing for #Expo15NHS I have begun to look at more and more research in relation to staff experience, staff engagement and how this relates to improved outcomes and quality care. I am looking into all areas of the NHS, however I personally have a particular interest in maternity services. This blog post focuses upon one element of the midwifery staff experience, it is not a sneak peak of my NHS Expo seminar….there are no spoilers 😛
When I came across the following piece of research, I found myself reflecting deeply upon our NHS culture and the #StaffExperience in maternity services:
This study uses a multi-method approach to explore midwives’ views and experiences of work within a large NHS maternity unit. The benefits of introducing flexible working and initiatives to encourage a healthy work life balance are clear. Should these interventions be successful, we may see the maternity workforce thrive and grow, rather than retire and burnout. It is also clear however, that supporting these interventions may require additional workloads to be placed upon supporting staff as they ‘pick up the slack’
What concerned me most about these findings in the experiences of midwives, was that where initiatives were introduced to promote flexible working and healthy work life balance, midwives became resentful of each other.
This cannot be psychologically healthy, and yet maternity services must find the right solution to support the staff experience. I think that the real tensions may actually stem from the expectation that to be a professional, midwives have to be committed to the profession and put the needs of the woman and maternity service first, before their own……
“Having a healthy work life balance may still be seen as being incompatible with being a professional midwife……”
This conclusion evokes a great sadness for me.
This study concluded that “Unless these tensions are addressed, divisions between midwives and within the profession will intensify.”
This cannot be conducive to patient safety, care quality or healthy staff experiences for a psychologically safe professional journey.
-Midwives need to be able to value their own well being in order to provide high quality patient care.
-NHS organisations need to reinforce the value of having healthy staff in order to be able to deliver high quality care.
-The midwifery profession may need a new narrative that accepts that midwives deserve to put themselves first some times, and that this does not make them any less of a professional midwife in doing so.
As the quality of patient care is intrinsically linked to staff well being, it would be unethical not to value the midwives’ right to a healthy work life balance. This right should be free of negative judgement and resentment, so that a healthy and caring culture of maternity services can thrive as we face the challenging times ahead.
Lets be kind to ourselves and each other…
Or rather – 1.1 treat people with kindness, respect and compassion #NMCcode
I would be keen to hear your views on this subject, what are your experiences in practice?
Dr Sally Pezaro 