NHS staff to be offered counselling-style sessions

Guardian News and Media/London

A&E units are so busy they have been likened to warzones, a huge NHS reorganisation has bred confusion while dealing with patients, illness and death is never easy so it is no wonder hospital staff may be increasingly getting stressed and burned out.

Now, in an initiative which developed in the US, growing numbers of healthcare professionals are being offered the chance to attend regular private sessions where they can talk honestly about the pressures they face in providing care, the emotional burden of their jobs and isolation some can feel despite being part of a multi-specialty care team.

In recognition of the challenges faced by NHS personnel, the department of health (DoH) is putting £650,000 into increasing the number of hospitals which offer staff such sessions from £15 to £55.

The winners, they hope, will be patients’ quality and safety of care, not just the wellbeing of doctors and nurses who come along.

Called Schwartz Centre Rounds, they are monthly, hour-long get-togethers where staff from every department in the hospital open up about work-related issues that are on their minds in a confidential and supportive setting.

Already used in 320 hospitals and other health facilities in the US they are credited with helping staff communicate better with patients and workmates and be more compassionate, and feel more valued and better equipped to handle the ups and downs that healthcare involves.

The DoH is expanding the number of hospitals offering the sessions after Robert Francis QC’s landmark report into the Mid Staffs hospital care scandal endorsed them as a way of tackling what he called the “social and emotional challenges associated with their jobs” and how staff work together.

His 31-month public inquiry into the estimated 400-1,200 avoidable deaths at Stafford hospital between 2005 and 2009 found huge problems with the NHS’s often “self-serving” culture and recommended sweeping changes.

“Shocking failures of care, like Mid Staffs and Winterbourne View, demonstrate the need for more compassionate care right across hospitals and care homes”, said Dr Dan Poulter, the health minister, who is also an obstetrician.