Yvonne Ankers, Senior Librarian, Robert Jones and Agnes Hunt Orthopaedic Hospital NHS Foundation Trust
Background
Like many NHS Trusts, the Robert Jones and Agnes Hunt Orthopaedic Hospital (RJAH) has seen staff wellbeing amongst its principal concerns in recent years. RJAH has made this a top priority, with a variety of successful projects and initiatives to help support and empower staff. The Library & Knowledge Service has been involved in supporting some of this work.
Preceptorship Programme
At the start of the year, we were asked to be part of an education day for newly qualified staff. RJAH was launching a new 12-month in-house preceptorship programme for AHP and Nursing staff. The programme aims to support recruitment, integration and retention, with staff wellbeing featuring high on the agenda. The first day was a real success and a repeat of the programme was launched at the start of July, for the second cohort of staff.
We designed and delivered a 60-minute segment on resources for wellbeing, covering organisational, local and national sources (including services and facilities, books, podcasts, apps, websites, toolkits etc). The session included lots of interactivity and staff were able to benefit from peer learning activities. Feedback for the session was positive, with one attendee saying:
“I loved the quiz and the whole session was delivered brilliantly. The session
was very helpful and easy to follow, and gave us some very useful information”
We’ve since received some follow-up queries as a result of delivering the sessions.
OurSpace
As part of its efforts to support staff, RJAH has launched a new and innovative staff wellbeing portal, called OurSpace. The platform provides a wellbeing ‘one-stop shop’ for staff, and provides information on self-help, exercises, Trust policies, mental health first aid, staff networks, events, book and podcast recommendations.
The portal launched in June, and we proactively approached the organisers to request a stand at the in-person launch event. It provided a great opportunity to promote our collection and services, and to assist the platform in promoting the importance of reliable health information.
We took along some examples of books we have in stock, together with leaflets about national and local e-book collections, health literacy and general library service information. It was always going to be a tall order to compete with the free food and therapy dog in attendance; however, we also had some pens and bookmarks to give out, which went down a treat and helped draw staff to the stand.
We’re also currently liaising with the platform lead to develop the range of book recommendations on the website.
Impact
Staff are now more aware of the myriad of resources available freely to them, and the resources will hopefully be beneficial to the health and wellbeing of many members of staff. Our participation in these projects has enabled us to support Trust objectives and will hopefully help contribute to improved staff retention and sense of wellbeing.
As a service, we benefitted from some great opportunities to reach staff we might not normally or easily have come in to contact with. We experienced positive engagement and interaction at all events; though hard to quantify, increased awareness of the services and benefits we can offer should inevitably have a positive impact on both the individual and on our service. As a result of attending these events we also became more aware of the specific types and topics of resources that staff prefer.
We were able to easily and visually demonstrate the diversity and relevance of our collection, and a number of people have commented on the fact that they didn’t realise we have so many non-clinical / study-related things to offer. Just a few weeks have passed since the OurSpace event, but we have already received some enquiries and requests from people in staff groups / roles who might not ordinarily use our service.
Looking to the Future
We hope to build on our participation at these events by promoting wellbeing resources more widely and signposting them more within the library itself. We will also look to introduce some current awareness / update provision around personal health and wellbeing. Additionally, we will continue to support the OurSpace platform, in the promotion of reliable health information and in our book collection development. We look forward to seeing what develops next in this area!
Health Libraries Group 