Wellbeing

The wellbeing cross-cutting theme of enhance highlights the importance of supporting a healthy and sustainable work life balance for all healthcare professionals. Our multi-professional Wellbeing Resource Guide outlines the eight dimensions of wellbeing and shares some practical tips for improving wellbeing on an individual level as well as driving the change needed at a team or system level.

Download the enhance Wellbeing Resource Guide here

The guide was developed by a working group with subject matter expertise and inspired by the GMC Caring for Doctors report which outlined how autonomy, belonging and competence contribute to a sense of wellbeing and satisfaction with our work lives and have a direct impact on quality and safety of patient care.

Autonomy is about having a degree of control over your working life. This is more than simply about working conditions or rota patterns (though both of these are important) and extends into the influence you have over the culture of your workplace. Ensuring that your voice is heard and workplace initiatives to create a just culture are manifestations that this is being taken seriously by your organisation. You will see examples of actions that you might take in this respect woven through several of the domains, most notably in the Social Justice and Health Inequalities domain, but also in Environmental Sustainability and Systems Working.

Belonging is about feeling part of a something, whether your profession, your team or your community. There is considerable emphasis on systems, on interprofessional team working and on multi-agency collaboration throughout the enhance programme. This is about helping you make connections, between individuals, teams and organisations. You will also see references to asset based and community centred approaches to healthcare, fostering strong connections between you and the communities you serve.

Finally, competence is about being able to do your job well. This is more than the specific knowledge, skills or capabilities you have; it is about being in a workplace where it is possible to do a good job and being supported in doing that job well. Accounts of moral distress in the health professions highlight what happens when you know the right thing to do, but constraints such as resources, time and workload mean you are unable to deliver it. The enhance programme is an invitation to influence ways of working, ways of delivering care and to make the wisest use of resources, including your own time and expertise. Competence also requires access to training and development opportunities that enable you to develop your practice, so you are able to contribute to these new ways of working.

The enhance programme is an invitation to influence ways of working, ways of delivering care and to make the wisest use of resources, including your own time and expertise. The aim is to ensure this is genuine, sustainable, and adaptable offer for individuals at different stages of their career and personal lives.