What happened?
As he gets older, Howard is finding it more difficult to manage being on call. Shift patterns can also be more challenging than when he was younger.
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Howard struggles to sleep which can make him irritable at work and at home.
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Recently Howard had been rude to his colleagues, Kiranpal and Tom, during ward round. It was his third night in a row and he was tired. He was disappointed in himself because he knew it wasn’t right to take out his tiredness on Kiranpal and Tom – she had done nothing wrong.
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Howard knows he should take some time off, but he feels obligated to take on extra shifts, because someone has to do them. His partner, Ryan, is frustrated with him over this because they haven’t had a weekend off together in the last 6 months.
And then?
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Howard found the BMA guidance on the ageing workforce helpful. They recommend the older you get, the number of night shifts should decrease.
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He’s unsure how this could be implemented in PICU, because consultant cover is always needed.
How to improve
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Staff are responsible for developing their own self-awareness of how their behaviour might impact on colleagues. In this situation it could be useful for Howard to have a reflective conversation to help him identify ways he can communicate his fatigue to others and to avoid being rude in the future.
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Employers need to take seriously the BMA guidance and work with them to pilot new ways of
managing shifts to take into account the ageing workforce and changes in sleep.
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A retirement pathway could be introduced which values the expertise of older staff members without compromising their wellbeing. (This is a complex challenge requiring further research to test its feasibility and potential effectiveness).
How we created the SWell Avatars
All characters, scenarios and events have been developed from data gathered as part of the SWell Birmingham research project. The scenarios and events have been altered from the versions provided by research participants to protect their anonymity.
How to use the SWell Avatars
We know from our research and our own experiences that when we are under pressure at work, sometimes we behave out of character, interactions with colleagues or with patients or their parents can be challenging, and sometimes things happen that are beyond our control. For example, unexpected patient deaths, which might lead to unpredictable reactions. Working in paediatric critical care is a high-pressure environment and so we know it is important to become self-aware, to prepare ourselves with the skills to manage those challenges, and to be able to navigate the unexpected.
We have created a set of Swell Avatars in different scenarios to highlight some of these kinds of situations and to make suggestions about how they might be managed successfully. We’re keen for our SWell Avatars to respect equality, diversity and inclusion principles and for them to represent the workforce. To achieve this, when creating the SWell Avatars, we have been mindful of the intersectionality between staff members and their protected characteristics (e.g., age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, race, religion or belief, sex, and sexual orientation).
We have created a number of scenarios, developed from real-life stories participants told us in our research. We have changed important details to protect their anonymity. We have identified potential solutions to the issues raised in the scenarios to help individuals find appropriate support and to help them reflect on and learn from the SWell Avatar scenarios. The SWell Avatars can be used to help facilitate a reflective conversation between colleagues, they might be used in mentoring, they could help teams identify new wellbeing initiatives or identify needs for staff training and development.
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