Wellness in the Workplace: Promoting Health Among Healthcare Professionals

December 28, 2023
Blogs
Promoting Health Among Healthcare Professionals

Everyone loves the benefits of becoming a nurse or a doctor. We usually forget that professionals working in healthcare are open to a great deal of stress and burnout issues. They might have to face compassion fatigue due to their work environment. Several reasons can make the life of a healthcare worker hard, such as complex medical cases, overtime duties, heavy workloads, emotional challenges, and more. Quality care and productivity are imperative when it comes to healthcare professionals. Keeping up the quality is not always possible due to the negative impacts they experience on their mental, physical, and emotional health through the aforementioned issues. Experts always suggest choosing a firm from the most reputed UK healthcare recruitment agencies when you are looking to be a healthcare worker. In the coming sections of this blog, we will discuss “Wellness in the Workplace: Promoting Health Among Healthcare Professionals” as well as some strategies and practices that can help to achieve this goal.


It is an organizational responsibility

Workplace wellness is not possible for an employee alone in an organization. The whole organization has to work towards improving wellness in the workplace. Keeping the work environment supportive for the employees is the first thing you should consider achieving in your workplace. In a supportive work environment, every employee will be treated with enough respect for their culture and values, along with their efforts. 


Benefits of Wellness in the Workplace

A workplace where every employee is happy to spend their time is one benefit of assuring wellness in the workplace. Workplace wellness has hands in both individual and organizational-level positivity.


Improved physical health

A stressed or tense mind is more vulnerable to chronic diseases. Commonly seen illnesses include diabetes, obesity, cardiovascular disease, etc. Reassuring a safe workplace that promotes employee wellness helps them break out of unwanted stress through which they can evade these chronic diseases.


Improved mental health

Mental health is a significant factor when it comes to wellness. Going through depression and anxiety is not a new thing for healthcare employees. A change is what we should be reaching for with the implementation of practices that can improve employee wellness. A healthy workplace will improve the mood and self-esteem of workers, and they will be more energetic and supportive in the work environment.


Improved emotional health

Several healthcare employees go through issues like moral distress, compassion fatigue, and trauma. Prevention of this happening again or anymore is what we can achieve by creating a happy workplace for them that can lead to more empathy and emotional intelligence among the healthcare workers under any circumstances.


Improved Performance

Productivity and efficiency are two really important attributes that every healthcare facility needs. A creative and innovative team is important to achieve this. A healthy workplace will help people become creative and innovative, which leads to an efficient output from the facility. Assuring wellness in the workplace also ensures the improvement of problem-solving skills, communication, teamwork, and decision-making skills among healthcare workers.


Improved quality care

A healthy workplace leads to better communication, teamwork, and decision-making skills. These allow healthcare providers to satisfy their patients with the best quality care while building a healthy patient-provider relationship and increasing trust among all individuals in the system.


Improved retention

Keeping the involvement rate of workers in the facility high is another great benefit you can achieve by guaranteeing wellness in the workplace. Keeping the absent rate low and the present rate high is a major factor in motivating commitment among healthcare workers, through which you can increase loyalty.


How can you guarantee wellness in the workplace?

Making sure of a safe and healthy workplace for healthcare workers takes a comprehensive approach that includes various factors. In the following section, you will read about some of the best strategies and practices through which you will be able to promote this multifaceted concept of workplace wellness.


Evaluating the level of employee wellness at the moment

Knowing the present situation of employees should be the first thing in the wellness plan of healthcare facility management. Conducting face-to-face interviews, surveys, and audits will help to acquire an overall insight into the current work culture and environment. The major goal should be the collection of the preferences, needs, and expectations of employees regarding wellness in the workplace.


Building a plan according to a vision

Every update you make in the workplace should sync seamlessly with the values and goals you promote. Changes without benefit are no changes since they do not satisfy what you need. Creating a clear-cut plan for wellness includes a perfect outline of major factors such as goals, actions, timelines, and resources.


Implementing wellness strategies and initiatives

The next phase is the implementation of the plan and initiatives you prepared to ensure wellness in the workplace. Programs to promote employee communication and involvement should take place alongside initiatives to address the mental, physical, and emotional state that workers are going through. Screenings, fitness classes, counseling sessions, and stress management workshops are some of the best ways to improve the wellness of healthcare workers in their workplace. Some other options you can implement for the same objective of a healthy workplace include:

  • Nutrition counseling
  • Mindfulness training
  • Peer support groups
  • Mentoring groups
  • Flexible work arrangements


Monitoring the impacts and results of wellness in the workplace

Analyzing the outcome after the implementation of the plan for workplace wellness should be a priority. It allows you to get an overall idea of how the wellness initiatives and programs are working for your employees. Various methods could be used to collect the feedback of employees, including direct and indirect approaches such as the following:.

  • Surveys
  • Questionnaires
  • Focus groups
  • Audits to collect data on quality of care, staff satisfaction, performance, etc.

These allow healthcare facility management to continuously improve the workplace wellness of their employees.


Creating a culture of wellness in healthcare

Creating a plan and implementing it successfully does not relieve you of the responsibility of fostering a healthy workplace. Everyone has the responsibility of keeping up with what they started to nurture a wellness culture among every individual in the workplace.

Healthcare aspirants can now apply for several HCA healthcare jobs London provides across major facilities. You can also opt for healthcare assistant jobs UK hospitals offer. Workplace wellness is one major objective of Xpress Health, for which we assist nurses in finding the perfect shifts regarding their preferences.