Dear Colleagues

Some of you may be reading this during the Christmas and New Year ‘downtime’ or maybe you have managed to get a decent break and it is the start of the New Year.  Whichever, I want to wish you all a very happy and healthy New Year. 

As we commence 2023, the Network is pleased to be continuing to work very closely with NHS England in delivering aspects of the Growing OH&WB agenda.  New work projects aimed at providing some practical support, tools and resources to help you in your day job will be starting in 2023, so do look out for updates in this bulletin and our website as we progress. In addition, we plan to hold some regional meetings with you to get your input into these projects - so please get in touch with your regional board representative for more details. 

One of the key drivers within the Growing OH&WB Strategy is around the OH recruitment and retention challenge, and so want to draw your attention to part of the Annual General Meeting (news item 1) where we look forward to a presentation from Janet O’Neill, Deputy Head of the National School of Occupational Health.  Make sure you put the date and time in your diary.  

Best wishes to you all for the year ahead.

Hilary

Chair, NHS Health at Work Network

In this edition:

1. Annual General Meeting: 31 January 

2. Temperature in the Workplace

3. National School of Occupational Health Newsletter

4. Avoiding Shift Worker Fatigue

5. Featuring Your Regional Board Rep: Steven Forster

Advertorial – Greys Specialist Recruitment

6. MoHaWK Update

7. Leadership Through Education for Excellent Patient Care (LEEP)

8. Research Study: Career Experiences and Progression in OH Practitioners

9. Health and Wellbeing Boards Guidance

10. Useful Resources, Events and Research Studies

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1.    Annual General Meeting: Tuesday 31 January 13.30 – 14.30

The Network’s AGM will be held on Tuesday 31 January, from 13.30 – 14.00 followed by a presentation by Janet O’Neill, Deputy Head of the National School of Occupational Health entitled “The OH Workforce Shortage - Solutions”.  This will be a virtual Zoom event.  To register your place, please contact admin@nhshealthatwork.co.uk       

2.    Temperature in the Workplace

As winter takes hold, you can find helpful advice from the HSE on keeping people as comfortable as possible when working in the cold. There is also guidance on protecting workers from hot temperatures.  The Workplace (Health, Safety and Welfare) Regulations require employers to provide a reasonable indoor temperature in the workplace.

The guidance has been refreshed to make it easier to find and understand advice on how to protect workers in both low and high temperatures.  It explains how you can assess the risks to workers and put controls in place to protect them.

It covers:

• working in hot and cold temperatures
• steps you can take to make people feel more comfortable
• outdoor working
• dehydration
• cold stress and heat stress

There is a workplace temperature checklist to help you carry out a basic risk assessment. 

3.    National School of Occupational Health Newsletter

Read the latest updates from the National School in their winter newsletter here

4.    Avoiding Shift Worker Fatigue

Poorly designed shift working and long working hours, which don’t balance work demands with time for rest and recovery, can result in fatigue, accidents, injuries and ill health.

Worker fatigue is one of a number of human factors that can affect health and safety.

Visit the HSE website to view hints and tips for shift-workers.

There is also a downloadable publication Managing shift work, which improves the understanding of shift work and its potential health and safety impact.

5.    Featuring your Regional Board Rep: Steven Forster

This month North East Board Member Steven Forster talks about the benefits of working together and sharing best practice across the NHS region:

'As a region we collaborate via Teams in advance of many initiatives but in particular in advance of mass vaccination programmes for staff.  The early establishment of common goals, principles of best clinical practice and sharing of innovations has led to effective and efficient programmes.

The use of bookings systems, shared written instructions and training methods has enhanced service improvements.

This continues throughout the year with co-hosted training events for BCG immunisation and delivery of monkeypox prevention programmes.

All these initiatives are dependent on shared understanding and trusted relationships’. 

Please get in touch with your regional Board Member if you wish to raise any issues or challenges, or equally if you have some good practice you would like to share more widely.

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6.     MoHaWK: Round 22 Is On Its Way!

Round 21 will be closed on 31^st December and then Round 22 opening on 1st January 2023 for data input. As per previous rounds we will leave this open until the commencement of the following round as this appears to have worked well for many services who are still balancing work demands  and allows greater flexibility of when you submit data.

The briefing notes for Round 22 are here. If you have any specific queries then please contact hilary.winch@nnuh.nhs.uk

7.      Leadership Through Education for Excellent Patient Care (LEEP)

The LEEP course is available to all professionals across the NHS.  It is an interactive leadership course that has been developed by Health Education England - London.  The course is delivered over four webinars and participants will learn through sharing their experiences and understanding of concepts in discussions and gain practical experience of positive change with a quality improvement project.  

For more information, please see the website: https://london.hee.nhs.uk/leadership-through-education-excellent-patient-care-leep

8.    Research Study: Career Experiences and Progression in OH Practitioners

You are invited to take part in a research study being conducted by researchers at the University of Glasgow to investigate differences in experiences and career progression of UK Occupational Health (OH) practitioners based on personal characteristics such as age, gender, religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation, and disability.

Complete the research here 

For more information contact Prof Drushca Lalloo: drushca.lalloo@glasgow.ac.uk

9.    Health and Wellbeing Boards Guidance

Health and wellbeing boards (HWBs) have been a key mechanism for driving joined up working at a local level since they were established in 2013.  The Health and Care Act 2022 introduced new architecture to the health and care system, specifically the establishment of integrated care boards (ICBs) and integrated care partnerships (ICPs).

In this new landscape, HWBs continue to play an important statutory role in instilling mechanisms for joint working across health and care organisations and setting strategic direction to improve the health and wellbeing of people locally.

You can read the new guidance here

10. Useful Resources, Events and Research Studies

Prevalence of post-traumatic stress disorder and common mental disorders in healthcare workers in England during the COVID-19 pandemic: a two-phase cross-sectional study - previous studies on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the mental health of health-care workers have relied on self-reported screening measures to estimate the point prevalence of common mental disorders. Screening measures, which are designed to be sensitive, have low positive predictive value and often overestimate prevalence.  Read more here

Working with terminal illness: what is known and what is needed - free online webinar, Thursday 12th January, 2.00 - 3.30pm. Join the What Works Centre for Wellbeing to discuss the findings from their newly published research on working with terminal illness.  Book your webinar place here

Healthcare Wellbeing Interventions - Call for Interview Participants – the research team from Birkbeck, University of London, are looking to collate examples of staff wellbeing interventions in the UK healthcare sector that focus on the working environment, structure, and/or working patterns of healthcare workers. They are looking to interview individuals with experience of organising or running staff wellbeing interventions in the UK healthcare sector, to further understand the barriers and facilitators in such interventions.  Read more here

The puzzle of the UK’s half a million missing workers https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-63625989        

Half a million more people are out of the labour force because of long-term sickness - The number of working-age adults who are out of the labour market (known as "economically inactive") because of long-term sickness has been rising since 2019, from around 2.0 million people in spring 2019, to about 2.5 million in summer 2022.  Read more here

Evidence and decision-making in occupational safety and health - The final report has now been published on the RAND website. You can access the publication here

Measuring the nation’s health - 

https://blog.ons.gov.uk/2022/11/09/the-health-index-2020-measuring-the-nations-health/           

The ONS’ Health Index is a rich data set that gives us an overall picture of the nation’s health and how it has been declining or improving. We can also see in close-up how health varies from area to area and what local factors are in play.        

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The NHS Health at Work Network brings together all OH teams providing health and wellbeing services to NHS OH staff.  It is dedicated to providing consistent, high quality health at work services to all NHS staff through collaborative working.

Members of OH teams in NHS Health at Work Network member organisations can receive the bulletin and access the restricted areas of the website as a membership benefit – if you are not sure of your login details email admin@nhshealthatwork.co.uk   

Please share this bulletin with colleagues and encourage them to register to receive it regularly.  Non-Network members can also register to receive the monthly bulletin here.

You can contact the Network through your regional representative or as shown below.  Please get in touch if you have any queries or comments, if there is anything you would like to see in future issues of the bulletin, or if you have news to share.

Hilary Winch, Chair                                                 hilary.winch@nnuh.nhs.uk

Andrew Gilbey, General Manager                       admin@nhshealthatwork.co.uk  

Postal address: NHS Health at Work, PO Box 857, York YO31 6FR