enhance: spotlight on wellbeing

Wellbeing is personal and subjective but also universally relevant. It is a concept that is influenced by individual, cultural and systemic factors: people intuitively understand the value of wellbeing. (Health Education England enhance wellbeing guide, 2022).

As healthcare professionals, we are trained to deliver person centred care, and we do this well. The problem is an increasing demand and complexity of patient care coupled with workforce pressures means we often fail to prioritise our own health and wellbeing even though we know we should. As well as the personal negative impact, research from the GMC and the Royal College of Physicians has highlighted a demonstrable and concerning ripple effect on patient care, patient safety, healthcare teams and wider systems.

This is not something new, healthcare professionals have been grappling with this challenge for years, but the coronavirus pandemic has compounded the issue. To keep up with service delivery demands, many staff feel obliged to skip breaks and work longer hours. The recent RCN Nursing Under Unsustainable Pressure report highlighted that over 65% of the 20,000 nurses and midwives surveyed often felt unable to take their designated breaks and regularly stayed beyond the end of their shift.

Although this may help service provision in the short term, over time it can lead to burnout and a further depleted workforce – with over half of nurses and midwives feeling demoralised by their current work situation. Concerns are similarly high amongst doctors - according to the annual GMC National Training survey, which features 7 questions from the evidence based Copenhagen burnout inventory - all wellbeing measures were worse in 2022 compared to the previous year. Two thirds of respondents said they were often or always worn out by the end of their working day, with 44% saying they even felt exhausted in the morning at the prospect of another day at work.

It is now more important than ever to focus on maintaining our health, wellbeing, and work life balance in order to thrive rather than merely survive at work. We each have a responsibility to make a conscious effort on a personal level to look out for ourselves and colleagues. However, a system level paradigm shift in priorities and actions is also fundamentally required to create sustained change. We are starting to see this need for change reflected in policies such as the NHS People Plan which cements wellbeing as a pillar of future workforce strategy and emphasises the need for organisations to have compassionate leaders who promote wellbeing.

To develop and champion compassionate leadership and health and wellbeing for staff, HEE believes that a focus on wellbeing must be an integral part of postgraduate healthcare education and continued professional development for all healthcare professionals. It is one of four cross-cutting themes of the Enhancing Generalist Skills programme (enhance), which is a new multi-professional development offer being piloted across England. To support the enhance syllabus, we have published a wellbeing guide in collaboration with a working group of subject matter experts. The guide outlines the eight dimensions of wellbeing and some practical tips for improving staff wellbeing on an individual, team and system level such as nominating wellbeing champions, introducing wellbeing conversations and creating resources such as going home checklists.

Whatever your role in healthcare, evidence shows us that those in caring professions often wait until we are really unwell before asking for help. We have a collective responsibility to change this. We need to prioritise looking after ourselves and supporting colleagues, drive the change towards a healthy and sustainable future workforce and play our part in delivering the NHS People Promise – ‘working together to improve the experience of working in the NHS for everyone.'

Download our enhance wellbeing resource guide