Yvonne Coghill – special advisor to the new NHS Race and Health Observatory – was one of the panellists at an HSJ webinar on 15 June.
Ms Coghill joined Pedro Delgado, vice president at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, Caroline Docking, assistant chief executive at Newcastle Hospitals Foundation Trust and Chris Gordon, director of improvement at Barts Health Trust for the webinar on how the NHS can improve staff wellbeing post-pandemic.
As well as staff deaths and illnesses from covid, the NHS is having to deal with staff suffering from “long covid” and others who have suffered emotionally from the trauma of caring for so many desperately unwell patients.
Many others will not have suffered such high levels of pyschological trauma but will be feeling exhausted after working through the pandemic and may have lost touch with their motivation for working within the NHS. Burnout and compasssion fatigue may be buzz words but they may also accurately describe many NHS workers’ current state.
The is a latent risk for NHS organisations that this could lead to increased staff turnover and absenteeism, and ultimately impact on the quality of patient care.
But the need to support these staff also brings issues of equality and equity, and whether some staff should be treated differently.
This HSJ webinar, in association with IHI, took place from 10.30am to 11.15am on Tuesday 15 June.
New viewers who would like to register to watch the on demand recording please click here.
Viewers who registered to view live can access the on demand version here.
