SWell-Birmingham where it all started

There was very little research evidence about what we might be able to do to improve staff wellbeing and to sustain that wellbeing for the longer term. The project was split into 3 phases:

Finding out about existing wellbeing initiatives.

Our starting point was to ask the staff in Paediatric Critical Care (PCC) at Birmingham Children’s Hospital about the initiatives they knew had been developed with a view to improving staff wellbeing. We then used health psychology research evidence to identify the ‘active ingredients’ (the Behaviour Change Techniques) used in those initiatives that are likely to be successful in changing behaviour.

You can read more about the existing staff wellbeing initiatives we identified in our paper describing how we developed the SWell interventions here.

What does wellbeing mean to you?

Wellbeing is quite an abstract thing. When you start thinking about it, it can be very difficult to put it into words. We asked staff to look at a selection of images of places, people, pets, and to identify one which represented wellbeing to them. We used Appreciative Inquiry to guide our open-ended questioning about what wellbeing means, and how we might think creatively about how we could improve wellbeing in the workplace.

You can read about this study in our BMJ Open paper here.

When is your wellbeing challenged – what helps and hinders at those times?

We interviewed PCC staff to find out what challenged their wellbeing at work. We used the Enhanced Critical Incident Technique which focused on the circumstances staff found challenging and what helped and hindered their wellbeing in those circumstances. This pragmatic focus was really important because we wanted this work to inform the development of our positively focused Staff Wellbeing (SWell) interventions.

Challenges were related to the unique context of PCC; a noticeable shift toward ‘chronically critically ill’ children who had long stays or repeat visits to PCC and the moral distress that can bring; the significance of a coherent and supportive team; changes and stresses in the workforce; and a need to satisfy basic human needs.

You can read more about this work in our Nursing in Critical Care paper here.