NHS England Chief Executive, Simon Stevens has announced a major drive to improve and support the health and wellbeing of 1.3 million health service staff. Speaking at the Health and Innovation Expo 2015 conference in Manchester, he set out how NHS organisations will be supported to help their staff stay well.
This will include serving healthier food, promoting physical activity, reducing stress, and providing health checks covering mental health and musculoskeletal problems – the two biggest causes of sickness absence across the NHS.
The new £5 million initiative has three pillars:
- First, a major drive for improved NHS staff health, spearheaded by a group of leading NHS hospital, mental health, ambulance, community and clinical commissioning group employers, in partnership with NHS Employers and Public Health England;
- Second, a new nationally-specified occupational health service for GPs suffering from burnout and stress, in partnership with the Royal College of GPs and BMA General Practitioners Committee;
- Third, national action by NHS England working with Public Health England and other agencies to challenge and support catering contractors and PFI providers to raise the standards of food and nutrition.
Simon Stevens said: “NHS staff have some of the most critical but demanding jobs in the country. When it comes to supporting the health of our own workforce, frankly the NHS needs to put its own house in order.
“At a time when arguably the biggest operational challenge facing hospitals is converting overspends on temporary agency staff into attractive flexible permanent posts, creating healthy and supportive workplaces is no longer a nice to have, it’s a must-do.
“And at a time when the pressures on GPs have never been greater, we need to extend the local practitioner health programmes that have been shown to help GPs stay healthy and get back to work when sick. Equally, it’s time for PFI contractors and catering firms to…ditch junk food from hospitals and serve up affordable and healthy options instead.”
Ten local NHS organisations and NHS England itself, collectively employing around 55,000 staff, have agreed to lead implementation of this new programme. All participating organisations will commit to six key actions:
- Providing the NHS health check at work for NHS staff aged 40 or over – so that staff are able to access it more easily, and receive local signposting and support, while testing new models of health assessments and healthrelated incentives.
- Providing specific capacity for staff to access physiotherapy and mental health talking therapies, as well as smoking cessation and weight management services.
- Ensuring patients and staff are always offered healthy options in restaurants, cafes and vending machines on site, and actively promoting healthier options through targeted promotions.
- Establishing and promoting a local physical activity ‘offer’ to staff, such as running yoga classes, Zumba classes, or competitive sports teams, and promoting healthy travel to work by offering the Cycle to Work scheme.
- Fully implementing Public Health England’s Workplace Wellbeing Charter assessment and accreditation process, fully implementing the NICE guidelines on workplace health.
- Identifying a Board level director lead and senior clinician to champion this work, while providing training to all line managers to help them support their staff’s health and wellbeing.
This new initiative is designed to put into practice the commitment made in the NHS Five Year Forward View‘to ensure the NHS as an employer sets a national example in the support it offers its own staff to stay healthy’.
