MENTAL HEALTH TIME FOR CHANGE
Ross Hodgson, CEO at Unity Plus, provides insights into the mental health challenges facing healthcare workers. He examines the root causes and primary stressors contributing to these issues, offering a nuanced perspective on their impact.
However, at Unity Plus, we believe presenteeism is more costly than absenteeism and poses serious risks to staff wellbeing and patient safety. It’s important to highlight these risks and implement interventions to identify and manage factors that contribute to healthcare professionals working while unwell.
There’s an unspoken expectation among healthcare professionals to be resilient, and admitting to struggles can be perceived as failure. This might be surprising, given that you’d expect empathy in this sector. While there is sympathy, healthcare workers still fear judgment, discouraging many from seeking the help they need. Those who do seek help oſten find that their organisation lacks adequate support due to underfunded employee assistance programmes. It’s a vicious cycle that needs breaking. Healthcare organisations must implement robust mental health policies and take real action to support their employees; prevention is better than intervention.
Figures reveal that one in seven people in the UK report their mental health is currently at its worst or in a bad state. This statistic highlights significant mental health challenges within the UK population at large. However, the situation becomes even more critical when considering the mental wellbeing of health and social care workers.
Today, healthcare professionals navigate a range of complex stressors that significantly impact their mental wellbeing and professional performance. The relentless workload, chronic understaffing, and growing complexity of patient care are major stress factors. This stress is evident, as reports indicate that the healthcare sector has the highest majority of workplace stress, with 54% of all cases attributed to workload pressures and emotional demands.
Healthcare workers are frequently burdened with navigating extensive documentation and bureaucratic processes, exacerbated by outdated systems. This consumes time that could otherwise be dedicated to direct patient care. The administrative tasks significantly contribute to the frustration and disengagement experienced by healthcare workers, who increasingly perceive themselves as 'office workers' rather than caregivers. Though costly and perhaps not prioritised, updating such systems could yield substantial improvements not only in the mental health of the workers but also task efficiency.
Healthcare facilities oſten operate with insufficient staff due to budget cuts, recruitment challenges, and retention issues. This understaffing requires existing staff to cover more shiſts and manage more patients, resulting in longer working hours, fewer breaks, and increased fatigue with little time for rest and recovery.
Unfortunately, healthcare professionals oſten choose to work even when unwell instead of taking time off to recover. Reasons for this ‘presenteeism’ include low staffing levels, a sense of responsibility to patients, and reluctance to let colleagues down.
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These root causes, which subsequently manifest into various mental health challenges, significantly impact both the performance and retention of healthcare professionals, and the widespread awareness of mental health challenges within the profession may also deter potential recruits.
“The relentless workload, chronic understaffing, and growing
complexity of patient care are major stress factors.”
The combination of these root causes is not just individualised or circumstantial; they are deep-rooted systemic issues within the healthcare system. Addressing these systemic flaws through comprehensive policy reforms, increased funding, and effective support mechanisms is vital.
It’s clear that the mental health of healthcare workers across the board isn’t prioritised, and this is especially true for agency workers, who often feel unsupported due to their lack of a consistent workplace. This shouldn’t be the case. Even though agency workers move from care home to care home, they should have a place to feel valued and supported. If organisations had these policies, feelings of being isolated or undervalued could be mitigated.
Unity Plus believes that prevention is better than intervention, and agencies should begin by implementing a robust mental health policy, followed by an ongoing strategy to support employees.
www.unityplus.co.uk www.tomorrowscare.co.uk
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