Rosie Blagg and Stephanie Petty
The purpose of this paper is to explore how staff attend to their well-being when working in an inpatient mental health setting with older adults with dementia and complex mental…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explore how staff attend to their well-being when working in an inpatient mental health setting with older adults with dementia and complex mental health needs; how staff understand the link between their well-being and the well-being of patients.
Design/methodology/approach
A semi-structured group interview was held with 11 members of two multidisciplinary teams. The discussion was audio-recorded and analysed using thematic analysis.
Findings
Staff reported managing their well-being by both connecting with and avoiding the difficult emotions of the work. The team avoided the gravity of the work through humour, a task-focus, an absence of thinking and the displacement of workplace frustrations onto an outgroup. Connecting with emotions was done in tolerable ways: in contained reflective spaces, in the presence of supportive others, through genuine connections with patients as people and when the organisation demonstrated care for the staff.
Practical implications
Avoidant strategies appeared to represent short-term ways of maintaining staff well-being, while connecting with the gravity of the work appeared to represent what we hope is a more sustainable approach to managing well-being. A crucial premise for staff well-being is teams embedded within organisations that care for their employees.
Originality/value
Poor staff well-being can have serious consequences for an organisation, particularly in the existentially challenging environment of dementia care. This study offers a unique opportunity to explore staff well-being in a UK inpatient mental health setting with older adults with dementia and complex mental health needs.
Details
Keywords
Thalia Anthony, Juanita Sherwood, Harry Blagg and Kieran Tranter
Samantha Rankin and Stephanie Petty
The perspectives of frontline clinical staff working with individuals in later life within an inpatient mental health setting, of their role in recovery, have not yet been…
Abstract
Purpose
The perspectives of frontline clinical staff working with individuals in later life within an inpatient mental health setting, of their role in recovery, have not yet been explored. The purpose of this paper is to understand what recovery means within an inpatient mental health setting for older adults. The authors address clear implications for clinical practice.
Design/methodology/approach
Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 11 multidisciplinary participants across two specialist older adult recovery units at an independent hospital in the UK. Thematic analysis was applied to the transcripts.
Findings
Three main themes were identified: participants identified their normative task as the promotion of “moving on” (clinical recovery) and their existential task as personal recovery. The context in which recovery happens was highlighted as the third theme. These represented competing workplace goals of clinical and personal recovery. This highlights the need to give permission to personal recovery as the process that enables mental health recovery in older adults.
Originality/value
Staff working in a inpatient mental health service for older adults discussed the meaning of recovery and their role in enabling recovery. This has implications for sustainable clinical practice in this setting. Recovery-orientated practice in this setting is required but the detail is not yet understood.