When it comes to mental health in the workplace there’s a temptation to avoid talking about it, but the truth is we should be.
Back in November we attended a health and wellbeing conference that specialized in mental health issues in the workplace and this piece here gives you our insight.
It’s fairly obvious that as jobs become more stressful, the more you increase the chance of mental health issues because in simple terms it just becomes harder to cope at work.
Recent research by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) suggested that the top three most stressful jobs in the UK today are nursing, teaching and welfare work and these sectors have undoubtedly seen an increase in mental health issues for employees in those fields. That in turn becomes a challenging management issue, which in fact creates a downward spiral effect that just gets increasingly worse.
If you take nursing as an example, we all know about the shortage of nurses in the UK today and we’re told that the figure currently stands at 50,000. If you’re a nurse working around those shortage then the chances are, you’re going to be overstretched, which increases your levels of stress, which in turn can lead you to taking time off work. This then creates the subsequent downward spiral for hospital management. Worryingly, current estimates suggest that a quarter of all sick days taken by nurses are a result of mental health issues.
All employers have a duty of care to the staff but with the sort of tight, overstretched teams that you have in nursing, time off for mental health related issues become a very serious administrative and management issue. In the case of nursing the problem is thought to be even worse because the working environment can naturally be traumatic by its very nature. Overworked medical staff in difficult working conditions increases stress levels even further which creates even more gaps in the team that can ultimately lead to some trusts being put into special measures.
As a quick history lesson, it was the ancient Greeks that championed ‘prevention over cure’ and in the case of nursing, the best way of avoiding mental health issues among the staff is to make sure that the gaps within the nursing teams are filled properly in the first place. This, in one simple move, would have a hugely positive impact on the problem and would prevent it from escalating out of control.
Naturally at My Healthcare Recruit we believe that the best way of solving this is to recruit international nurses as it’s the quickest and most effective way of solving the problem. We already know that when you have more complete nursing teams then you certainly have happier teams which in this case is the very essence of ‘prevention over cure’.
At My Healthcare Recruit we take mental health issues very seriously and it’s why our own wellbeing support is such an important part of the recruitment process. We meet and greet our international nurses, we make sure they have welcome packs, we put on social events and create groups to help them settle … we even give them UK SIM cards for their phones to help then stay in touch.
We’re raising the issue of mental health issue within the nursing sector because it needs to be talked about. It’s an issue for nurses, it’s an issue for the management teams and it’s an issue for the individual trusts.
If you are interested in how we can help, please get in contact.
My Healthcare Recruit supports UK healthcare employers in the public, private, and care sector to find international nurses who are a great fit for their organization, by using market-leading video interviewing tools to connect them to our database of qualified candidates. Our innovative approach makes international candidates easier to find and more cost-effective to source than ever before. Find out more at www.myhealthcarerecruit.com