Award-winning wellbeing programme

Learn about King’s Health Partners award-winning work supporting staff health and wellbeing during the COVID-19 pandemic.

In 2020, King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust worked closely with South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust to implement a coordinated wellbeing response for acute hospital staff. The programme brought together multiple disciplines to proactively manage the impact of COVID-19 on King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust’s 14,000-person workforce. The programme was facilitated by the structure and unique skill set of the Mind & Body Programme. Down to the tireless work, innovation and initiative of an entire team, the programme was rapidly created.

The programme was recognised for its ambition, clinical leadership and close links to the HR, organisational development and occupational health functions at the HSJ Awards 2020. The initiative was evidence based and had demonstrably led to behavioural and cultural change across the organisation. Dr Mary Docherty, Dr Claire McDonald, Dr Martin Parsons and Ainne Dolan were amongst those instrumental in driving the wellbeing programme. We hear from them about what receiving the award means to them.

Please describe your roles within King's Health Partners.

Dr Mary Docherty: I am a consultant liaison psychiatrist at the Department of Psychological Medicine, King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust. In my day-to-day role I work with people who have long-term conditions and mental health problems.

Dr Claire McDonald: I am principal clinical psychologist and clinical lead for staff support at King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust working between the workforce or organisational development and the occupational health teams.

Dr Martin Parsons: I am a senior clinical psychologist working with the liaison psychiatry teams at King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, providing mental health support to inpatients across the hospital.  I have also been volunteering to provide staff support since the pandemic began and was heavily involved in organising input from mental health professionals.

Ainne Dolan: I am Deputy Director of Organisational Development, Leadership, Learning and Staff Support at King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust. Organisational development is the application of behavioural science to enable people to transform organisations by aligning strategies, culture and capability with the goal of creating healthy and effective places to work.

Please describe the award-winning work on staff wellbeing.

From the start of the UK outbreak of COVID-19 there have been increasing concerns about the psychosocial impact of the pandemic on healthcare workers but limited evidence, guidance or planning on how to best support them. Our aim was to overcome this gap by designing and implementing a novel, evidence-informed and sustainable organisational response to support the psychosocial health and wellbeing of staff working under extreme conditions.

We used a strategic approach to ensure that support offered was accessible to staff with varied needs and who were working in rapidly changing temporary teams. Access to evidence-based psychological interventions needed to co-exist alongside an organisation-wide effort to build resilience and mental health literacy, meaning understanding how to obtain and maintain positive mental health, in psychologically healthy people. We designed and delivered a tiered a targeted model with six key interventions to seek to maximise impact.  

These included:

1. Tailored self-management resources and accompanying wellbeing communications strategy.
2. Wellbeing hubs: accessible areas for food, rest, peer support and wellbeing information.
3. A seven-by-seven face-to-face access point in the hospital for psychological first aid and signposting to more support.
4. Tele-psychologists for those with higher levels of need.
5. Embedded mental health experts on wards (ward buddies and wellbeing partners).
6. A multi-functional support service for teams providing bespoke educational resources, coaching, reflective practice, quality improvement and leadership tools to embed well-being and support structures in team processes.

What does receiving the HSJ “Workforce Initiative of the Year” award mean to you?

Winning this award is an opportunity to raise the status of staff health and wellbeing and the value of making it central to an organisation’s strategy and day to day functioning.

It is an excellent opportunity to highlight the value of our wellbeing programme and share its impact with other health and care organisations. The award recognises and thanks the programme team for their passion, commitment and hard work. We hope it also bolsters the wellbeing team as they continue to refine and deliver staff support through the ongoing pandemic and beyond.  Importantly it is also an opportunity to access a platform to thank our local community and volunteers who were integral to workforce wellbeing by providing food, messages of support and, solidarity with our organisation.

Overall, we would like to thank colleagues for their truly collaborative effort working across King’s College Hospital, South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trusts and King’s College London. Mental health colleagues across these organisations and other local networks volunteered their time, despite their demanding day jobs. Members of the organisational development team and staff who ran the new wellbeing hubs are central to the current programme.  Every single person went above and beyond driven by a desire to help their colleagues. They embraced new roles and functions and their creativity has helped place wellbeing at the heart of the Trust.

What have been the key learnings from your work and how do you see this impact it has had on south east London growing in the future?

One of the key learnings from running the staff health and wellbeing programme is the power of collaboration. Due to the incredible range of expertise that exists within our system, we were able to bring these skills sets together to make something innovative, meaningful and impactful for our staff.

The principles that underpinned our work were humility, curiosity, and care. It was so rewarding to find out how effective these principles can be in driving improvement. In addition to increasing the range of services available we were committed to supporting existing and evolving departmental efforts. The range of team level support systems that have grown up naturally across the organisation has been as important as the formal programme work. The next challenge is to ensure these teams are supported to sustain this work and that learning about what works for different departments is captured and spread.

What role has King’s Health Partners played in supporting your work?

King’s Health Partners Mind & Body Programme strategic priority is to join up mental and physical healthcare. The staff health and wellbeing programme was facilitated by the structure and unique skill set of the Mind & Body Programme. None of the success of the programme would have been possible without the Mind & Body programme team volunteering in the wellbeing hubs - with a particular mention of Kate Lilywhite, the then Mind & Body Programme Director, who oversaw the initial delivery of the programme, brought people together and helped get the core services up and running so efficiently. A programme like Mind & Body is vital to bridging the gap between organisations and specialisms to improve staff wellbeing.

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