Heartbeat: Military training programme tackles issues around stress

August 3, 2020

All of us may have been affected by COVID-19 in some way and it’s important to recognise that our mental health may be affected by the situations we’ve been part of, observed or heard about over the last few months.

The Trust has already trained some people to support colleagues in React Plus which is also known as mental health first aid.

However, we want to scale up that support in frontline departments, and are providing key staff with specific Trauma Risk Management (TRiM) training, to tackle issues like Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) which are predicted to arise in coming weeks and months.

Nora Parsons, Learning and Development Manager, said: “The Trust has partnered with an organisation called ‘March on Stress’ and are offering a tiered approach to training people to undertake mental wellbeing support roles. This includes all line managers being trained to have a brief ‘psychologically savvy’ conversation with colleagues, for example at the end of a shift, to help identify if support is needed and signpost to it.

“We are also encouraging all staff to access this training, whether or not they are line managers, so that they are able to support colleagues at the first level by recognising they may need help and referring them onto further interventions if needed.”

The training is delivered remotely via video and supporting material which takes less than an hour to complete and can even be accessed via your phone.

Toby Lewis, Chief Executive said: “We are focused on the current and future psychological wellbeing of our teams. We have a local comprehensive wellbeing offer in place, as well as making use of wider regional and national mental health support. Learning from Italy and elsewhere we have put in place dedicated COVID-19 arrangements to provide additional support for departments.

“We worked with healthcare and military colleagues to consider what would be most appropriate. From that has come a partnership with March on Stress. Their help is focused on delivering more advanced training in Trauma Risk Management (TRiM) which is a trauma focused peer support system designed to help people who have experienced a traumatic, or potentially traumatic, event. This will be important as we come through the recovery and restoration phase to help people come to terms with their experiences.”

Managing Director of March on Stress Ltd, Professor Neil Greenberg, explained: “We have been working with a number of NHS organisations to help them to ensure that they can implement a range of evidence based psychological support initiatives in order to help protect the mental health of their staff.

“We are delighted to have been asked by the Trust to help them roll out training to their supervisors which will help them carry out psychologically savvy supportive conversations with their teams. There is a great deal of evidence showing that supervisors have a critical role to play in supporting their team’s mental health and the training we are providing to SWB aims to help improve supervisors confidence to have those important conversations.”