WORK FORCE I S SUE S iM Med - Advert - Clinical Services Journal - Third Page - CSSD - JAN 2
we have different stages in our home and work lives and that needs to be reflected in flexible job planning to maintain interest and avoid stagnation wherever possible. The second part of the series, ‘Wellbeing and sustainable working’ seeks to promote a positive work-based experience and prevent the development of work-related psychological injury or illness. This requires the allocation of resources to protect staff in a highly pressurised environment. There are considerable departmental risks and costs in failing to address these issues: increased sickness; unhappy staff; the inability to staff the capacity required; difficulty in recruiting new staff; increase in bank, agency and locum costs; and reduced patient satisfaction. The key messages of the framework are aimed at senior management, both within and outside of critical care departments. It seeks to promote accessible leadership, engagement of the workforce, and the avoidance of tokenistic wellbeing resources. Good compassionate leadership is an essential resource to mitigate the demands of working in critical care. All leaders should ensure they prepare staff with the information necessary to manage expectations, and furthermore, they should be proactive and visible members of the team. We should seek to engage individuals within our workforce at every opportunity. By engaging staff more readily it is possible to counteract dissatisfaction and feelings of voicelessness, which ultimately lead to resignations, early retirement and burnout. Staff who have a sense of belonging will drive the whole workplace forward. Lastly, wellbeing resources should not be tokenistic or symbolic, but rather be built into work patterns. For example, a better designed work schedule and rota will provide far more gains than a once-a-year wellbeing day or placing posters on the unit. The third and final part of the Critical Staffing series is ‘Returning to Work’, for which we are very grateful for the expert advice and endorsement from the Society of Occupational Medicine. To increase all the positive aspects of working in critical care services we should include a structured framework for those returning after a period of time away.
There are a wide variety of reasons why people may be returning, and we have used personal vignettes to illustrate both good and bad practice in returns to the critical care fold. The reasons for time away from work include physical and mental illness, parental leave, bereavement, caring responsibilities and referral to the General Medical Council (GMC). We hope that the framework will help guide departments and individuals on how they should be supporting people who are returning to work. Such support is an essential component of any well-functioning
JANUARY 2023
service, with visible structures being crucial. In conclusion, critical care services in the UK are both under resourced and understaffed. It is essential to increase staffed critical care bed capacity, which will require staffing expansion across the multidisciplinary team to meet current and future demand. This need for expansion of staffed capacity has been apparent for many years and the Faculty of Intensive Care Medicine’s ‘Critical Staffing’ series seeks to address the need for NHS institutions to recruit more critical care staff, to better look after their mental and physical health in order to retain them, and to facilitate the safe and effective return of those who have to step away from critical care for a period of time. Politicians need to understand that you cannot run a 21st century healthcare service without adequate critical care services working in 21st century infrastructures. The Critical Staffing series is available to download from the Faculty of Intensive Care Medicine website:
www.ficm.ac.uk/ careersworkforceworkforce/critical-staffing CSJ
References 1 Critical capacity: A short research survey on critical care bed capacity, March 2018.
www.ficm.ac.uk/ sites/ficm/files/documents/2021-10/ficm_critical_ capacity.pdf
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2
https://www.ficm.ac.uk/careersworkforceworkforce/ critical-staffing
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About the author
Dr. Jack Parry-Jones is vice dean of the Faculty of Intensive Care Medicine and a consultant adult intensivist at the University Hospital of Wales in Cardiff. Jack has a postgraduate training background in medicine, anaesthesia and Intensive Care Medicine. Having been a London undergraduate, he then completed training programmes in London and Bristol. He moved from London to South Wales in 2003 and has worked solely as a consultant intensivist ever since. He has been the lead ICM clinician in Aneurin Bevan University Health Board and Cardiff and Vale University Health Board, as well as lead clinician for the South Wales Critical Care and Trauma Network.
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