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Emotional resilience has become a buzzword in the helping professions. Although resilience has been incorporated into the “official discourse” of social work, it is important to consider: • What does resilience mean? • To what extent do we as social workers need to be resilient? • Can resilience really protect our wellbeing and improve our professional practice? • Perhaps most importantly, how can we build our resilience to help us thrive in a profession that, although rewarding, can be very stressful? This evidence-based resource by Community Care Inform, aims to provide some guidance to help you navigate your professional journey. Based on their own research and that of others, they highlight the importance of emotional resilience in protecting your personal wellbeing and enhancing your professional practice and suggest ways to help you develop this important quality.

This is a guide from the British Psychological Society, for leaders and managers of healthcare services who will need to consider the wellbeing needs of all healthcare staff (clinical and non-clinical) as a result of the Coronavirus outbreak. It offers practical recommendations for how to respond at individual, management and organisational level involving the appropriate utilisation of expertise within their practitioner psychologist and mental health professionals and anticipates the psychological reactions over time, and what people may need to recovery psychologically from this.

Dr Esther Murray is a Health Psychologist working at Barts and the London School of Medicine and Dentistry. She has a keen interest in moral injury, the term used when people are witness to shocking or traumatic events that change their outlook on the world. In this podcast, from General Broadcast, the East England Ambulance Service Patient Safety Integration Lead talks to Esther about moral injury and how it can impact ambulance crews, as well as what we can all do to help each other.

Cumulative stress, compassion fatigue and trauma due to experiences with patient safety incidents impact the mental wellness of our healthcare providers. These factors contribute to inadvertent patient care errors, mental health issues and attrition which compromise patient safety. A peer support programme not only simply helps healthcare workers with their experiences with patient safety incidents but also improves the system and help make patient care safe. The Creating a Safe Space: Addressing the Psychological Safety of Healthcare Workers manuscript and the Canadian Peer Support Network are intended to assist healthcare organisations create peer-to-peer support programmes (PSPs) to improve the emotional well-being of healthcare workers and allow them to provide the best and safest care to their patients.

Drawing on research, best practice guidelines and expert clinical opinions, the COVID Trauma Response Working Group has created rapid guidance for planners putting in place psychological support for staff in the early stages of dealing with the COVID-19 outbreak. The King's Fund has developed this graphic as a quick reference version of the detailed guidance available on the traumagroup.org website.

A study from Jackson et al. looked at how the prevalence of psychological distress in the adult population of England has changed since 2020. The study found that the proportion reporting any psychological distress was similar in December 2022 to that in April 2020 (an extremely difficult and uncertain moment of the COVID-19 pandemic), but the proportion reporting severe distress was 46% higher. These findings provide evidence of a growing mental health crisis in England and underscore an urgent need to address its cause and to adequately fund mental health services.

The King's Fund has collected some examples of resources to support the mental health and wellbeing of both individuals and teams working across health and care.

This Clinical Knowledge Summary (CKS) topic is based on the National Institute of Health and Care Excellence (NICE) post-traumatic stress disorder guideline. This CKS topic covers the management of children and adults with post-traumatic stress disorder in primary care. It does not cover the management of post-traumatic stress disorder in secondary care; or the management of anxiety, depression, drug or alcohol misuse, dissociative disorders, or adjustment disorders.

How are trauma-informed approaches being implemented by public services – and what are the barriers to embedding the approach more widely? Produced jointly by the Centre for Mental Health and the Agenda, the alliance for women and girls at risk, this reports explores how trauma-informed approaches are being implemented by public services including women’s centres, prisons and mental health services. Evidence has shown that there are strong links between traumatic experiences and poor mental health. The need for public services to be trauma-informed has been repeatedly demonstrated. A sense of safety summarises the findings of interviews and site visits to a range of public services for women, including substance misuse, homelessness, mental health, the criminal justice system, and domestic and sexual abuse and exploitation. It found that services taking a holistic approach to supporting women’s needs were best able to make the change to becoming trauma-informed. However, many organisations faced barriers including short-term and fragile funding.

This guide aims to help staff and services understand the impact of psychological trauma on women in the perinatal period and respond in a sensitive and compassionate way. It aims to support staff to ensure they ‘do no harm’ through care delivery that, without thought or intention, could retraumatise individuals. This includes examples of how to: recognise and understand the impact of psychological trauma and how experiences may present during the perinatal period respond to disclosures and tailor care to needs of women and families so that services do not retraumatise individuals best support staff working in maternity and mental health services, acknowledging the effects of vicarious trauma and that staff may have their own experiences of trauma, which could impact on their capacity to deliver trauma-informed care.

This is the 15th annual clinical radiology census report by The Royal College of Radiologists. The census received a 100% response rate, meaning this report presents a comprehensive picture of the clinical radiology workforce in the UK as it stood in October 2022.   Key findings The workforce is not keeping pace with demand for services. In 2022, the clinical radiology workforce grew by just 3%. In comparison, demand for diagnostic activity is rising by over 5% annually, and by around 4% for interventional radiology services.  The UK now has a 29% shortfall of clinical radiologists, which will rise to 40% in five years without action. By 2027, an additional 3,365 clinical radiologists will be needed to keep up with demand for services.   This will have an inevitable impact on the quality-of-care consultants are able to provide. Only 24% of clinical directors believe they had sufficient radiologists to deliver safe and effective patient care.   Interventional radiologists are still limited with the care they can provide. Nearly half (48%) of trusts and health boards have inadequate IR services, and only 1/3 (34%) of clinical directors felt they had enough interventional radiologists to deliver safe and effective patient care.   Stress and burnout are increasingly common among healthcare professionals, risking an exodus of experienced staff. 100% of clinical directors (CDs) are concerned about staff morale and burnout in their department. 76% of consultants (WTE) who left in 2022 were under 60.  We are seeing increasing trends that the workforce is simply not able to manage the increase in demand for services. 99% of departments were unable to manage their reporting demand without incurring additional costs.   Across the UK, health systems spent £223 million on managing excess reporting demand in 2022, equivalent to 2,309 full-time consultant positions. Access the full census report here Related content: The benefits of a nursing led Vascular Access Service Team: A White Paper to outline a standardised structure and approach for the NHS to deliver vascular access services in every hospital (27 June 2022)