This update featured in the June/July 2022 Mental Health Nursing journal (Vol 42 #3). For those who aren’t Unite/MHNA members, you can buy your copy online via PocketMags or join and get 6 copies per year posted to your home and access to our back-issues online.
Pre-COVID-19 I was involved in an increasing number of conversations in the health sector framed around sustainability and the recognition that the NHS has a significant impact on our environment. Arguably another of the causalities of the global pandemic has been this loss of focus on what should be such an important subject.
Working in a mass vaccination centre in the north west of England, I saw first-hand the huge drain on resources. Thinking of the more than 300,000 people we vaccinated and the requirement for each to have a syringe, a needle, a surgical mask, several cleaning wipes, and the rest, and then multiplying this across the millions of doses delivered has been sobering.
While these were necessary products to manufacture and use, it has been dispiriting to hear both about the waste in money, over £4 billion in the first year of the pandemic, but also in our planet’s finite resources where useless personal protective equipment was paid for, appearing to benefit some individuals with links to the Conservative party, and now will be burnt as has been highlighted in June by the UK Parliament Public Accounts Committee (see https://tinyurl.com/3faaxhxe).
Hopefully, not only will this special edition of the journal contribute to a much-needed return of focus to this pressing issue, but also remind people of the inextricable link between our environment and our mental health.
Thinking back to anecdotal discussions with members during lockdown, those who had poor access to green spaces articulated how much more difficult the experience was. It is welcome that articles in this edition contribute to this growing body of evidence.
Living in Greater Manchester, it also feels prescient that the issue of vehicle charging related to emissions in London is raised. While there can be short-term economic arguments levied against proposed measures, it is important that the voices of expert health professionals are included in the debate so hopefully steps can be taken to safeguard the health of the public now and in the future.
Transport has an enormous impact on our planet. It also has a significant impact on our member’s ‘pockets’. For much of this year, alongside sister trade unions, we have been raising our concerns with respective governments across the UK about the rocketing costs of fuel versus the stationary amount of remuneration for using your car for work.
While Scotland and Wales as a whole and some employers locally have temporarily reacted by increasing allowances, the NHS in England and Northern Ireland has been slow to react.
We will continue to argue that more is needed so NHS staff are not unfairly subsidising this cost to deliver care.
Since my last update there has been some movement on pay. In Scotland, an offer of 5% has been made. As with all decisions on pay, the Scottish health committee has been consulted and they have decided to make the recommendation to our members to reject.
Our leading representatives in the country have been clear that the current pay offer represents a significant realterms pay cut for health service workers when the broader cost of living has hit a 40-year high of 11.1%. If you are a member in Scotland, please complete and return your ballot.
On the issue of pay across both the public and private sector, I am sure you will hear much over the next few months about how pay restraint is needed. In fact, it was a message that the governor of the Bank of England impressed upon people in February (see https://tinyurl.com/t63jrdre).
To counter this false narrative, there is a new report commissioned by our general secretary Sharon Graham on corporate profiteering and the cost-of-living crisis (see https://tinyurl.com/3yc94uuz).
Headlines include:
• Profit margins for the UK’s biggest listed companies (FTSE 350) were 73% higher than pre-pandemic levels in 2019.
• UK-wide company profits jumped 11.74% in the six months from October 2021 to March 2022, according to the most recent ONS data.
• In the same period, labour income only rose 2.61%; and fell by 0.8% after accounting for inflation.
• This recent profit jump is responsible for 58.7% of inflation in the last half year – as opposed to just 8.3% due to labour costs.
• This is not just about oil companies or a few ‘bad apples’. Even excluding energy firms, FTSE 350 company profits increased by 42% between 2019 and 2021.
It is certainly a report that is worth reading, or a summary can be seen in The Guardian’s article at https://tinyurl.com/3yf2ysem.
This update featured in the December 2021 / January 2022 Mental Health Nursing journal (Vol 41 #6). For those who aren’t Unite/MHNA members, you can buy your copy online via PocketMags or join and get 6 copies per year posted to your home and access to our back-issues online.
I always refer back to my previous update when I sit down to type out my new one.
With this edition, as it straddles the end of one year and the start of a new one, I also looked back at my update from the December 2020/January 2021 issue of the journal.
I remember at the time thinking about how long or short-lived the excitement would be of consigning the ‘COVID-19’ year to the history books. There was a real sense of hope for the new year.
But now, as we head into the ‘tidal wave’ of Omicron, it certainly feels that I could accurately describe 2021 as a ‘mixed bag’.
I mentioned last year that I had just signed up to support the local vaccination programme in Greater Manchester, as it was only last December that the first non-clinical trial vaccines were being given.
Over the last 12 months, the centre that I work at has given over 360,000 vaccinations and I have carried out more than 1,300 hours of clinical practice in my ‘spare time’.
I have found it an interesting prospect that with 2022 being my NMC registration revalidation year, I could revalidate only using the vaccinating side of my nursing.
Seni’s law
Another issue that I raised 12 months ago was our letter to the then mental health minister raising concern about the delay to the commencement of Seni’s Law.
I mentioned last month that I acted as a judge on the recent General Practice Awards, in the mental health category. You can read all about the worthy winners on their website.
As well as this event and the recent Birmingham Nursing in Practice/Pulse Live event, it was good to get out and about and meet people, including MHNA members, face-to-face again.
I did reflect when I wished our MHNA committee and MHN editorial board members a merry Christmas recently that it feels a real shame that opportunities to see them in 2021 have been so lacking.
I hope everyone reading this has an opportunity over the Christmas and New Year period to get, at least, a little break from the amazing work that you are all doing.
Thank you and I look forward to being back in touch with you in 2022. As always, please stay in touch.
This update featured in the April / May 2021 Mental Health Nursing journal (Vol 41 #2) a special edition produced with support from the Maternal Mental Health Alliance. For those who aren’t Unite/MHNA members, you can buy your copy online via PocketMags or join and get 6 copies per year posted to your home and access to our back-issues online.
I am writing this update the day after the pubs and non-essential shops in England reopened, as we reached another date in Boris Johnson’s ‘data not dates’ roadmap. It’s also a couple of weeks after my 41st birthday. I don’t normally bother much about my birthdays, but it helped hit home that we’ve been living with COVID-19 in the UK for over a year, as it was my second ‘celebration’ under lockdown conditions.
As a parent of three children under-11, lockdown conditions have at times felt like a very hard slog. As I often try to do, I’ve considered my own considerable privilege that has meant my partner and I have weathered this storm relatively unscathed, with any negative impacts having at least been balanced by some positives. I know others haven’t been so lucky.
Perinatal support
Only this week my wife has been able to return to face-to-face groups with our youngest, but there will be many thousands of parents out there who have had to support newly born babies with very limited support over such an extended period of time.
It really struck me when I was busy immunising a few weeks back and I heard a ‘real’ baby cry for what I guess was the first time in over a year.
Throughout this time, the Maternal Mental Health Alliance has done an impressive and much-needed job in speaking up for all women across the UK, demanding that they get consistent, accessible and quality care and support for their mental health during pregnancy and in the year after giving birth.
MHNA’s membership of this alliance predated COVID-19, and I’m really pleased that this edition fulfils our prepandemic pledge to dedicate an edition of the journal to perinatal mental health.
Leading lights in bringing this edition to publication are, from the Maternal Mental Health Alliance, Maria Bavetta and Amy Tubb, and from the Mental Health Nursing editorial board, Vanessa Gilmartin Garrity. While it is dangerous to start a list as inevitably people are missed off, I hope they will understand my singling out of their work, for which I am really grateful. Vanessa has performed such sterling work that it has meant that a second part will follow later.
Award winners
In my last update I promised that, in this edition, I would share the name of the 2021 Mental Health Nurse of the Year, an award run by the British Journal of Nursing and supported by MHNA. I was pleased to announce that Jane Anderson, an advanced clinical practitioner working with ear, nose, throat and maxillofacial patients in head and neck ‘CSU’, was the worthy winner at the online virtual ceremony on 8 March. You can watch the recorded ceremony and get more details from https://www.bjnawards.co.uk.
Other activities
Other work of note since my last update has included continued work on the NHS England and NHS Improvement oversight group on nurse suicide, work on international (nursing) recruitment, including on the advisory group, and with the Nursing & Midwifery Council.
This update featured in the February / March 2021 Mental Health Nursing journal (Vol 41 #1). For those who aren’t Unite/MHNA members, you can buy your copy online via PocketMags or join and get 6 copies per year posted to your home and access to our back-issues online.
In my last update I highlighted my attempts to sign up to help vaccinate all adults against COVID-19. As I write this update I’m into my second week of shifts at the Greater Manchester Mass Vaccination Centre.
In a building where in the past I played a few sets of tennis, we now process over 1,000 people every day – making sure they are welcomed, checked in, consented, vaccinated and recovered. As a healthcare registrant member of the team, my role has been to draw up 0.5ml doses of the AstraZeneca/Oxford vaccine (as it’s currently a one vaccine brand venue) or to gain consent.
After nearly a year of working in my house on a kitchen table, it’s great to be part of a team of people working towards a way out of the current lockdown and hopefully some normality.
On the issue of lockdown, it was great that your chair Evri Anagnostara signed up on behalf of MHNA to the campaign started by Natasha Devon MBE under the banner of the Mental Health Media Charter.
Many lockdown sceptics have argued that limiting people’s activities has had a negative impact on people’s health. I’m sure you will have all experienced both personally and professionally how it’s not a binary choice between protecting physical health and mental health, or vice versa.
By the time you read this issue of the journal we will have interviewed Natasha on an episode of #mhTV. Having heard her speak a number of times, I’m sure it will be well worth watching the recording if you don’t get to see it live.
Another three #mhTV’s I want to highlight here are the ones that have featured sole guests. Recently we interviewed Andrea Sutcliffe CBE, chief executive of the Nursing & Midwifery Council, who talked about her background both personally and professionally, and how that led her to make the work of the NMC more kind.
I’ve spent a fair bit of my time since my last update working with colleagues at the NMC alongside fellow lead professional officer and lead for healthcare regulation at Unite, Jane Beach, and a host of other people, on the request made by the health secretary Matt Hancock to enact emergency standards for student nurses to enable them to go out on paid placements.
At the end of 2020 it seemed highly unlikely that the government would support a removal of supernumerary status for student nurses again, but this quickly changed in January with the move to ‘alert level 5’ in England’s NHS. The NMC emergency standards were written in a way that gave more flexibility than those enacted in 2020.
While this ameliorated some of the problems that arose from that period, it created some new ones. As we knew it would be, the issue of disparity across even small geographical areas was repeatedly raised in our discussions with students. On the macro-scale, we saw big differences between the UK nations in the decisions taken.
The third #mhTV I want to highlight was our interview with Lyndsay Khan, who won last year’s British Journal of Nursing Mental Health Nurse of the Year Award. On the episode she spoke about her awardwinning work as an veterans’ nurse. In my next update I will report on the 2021 award, which I judged along with fellow editorial board member Athia Manawar, as Unite/MHNA has again supported the award. You can watch the awards ceremony online on Monday 8 March.
Finally, if you haven’t had your first COVID-19 vaccination, make sure you speak to your local workplace representative(s). And please play your part in encouraging everyone to be vaccinated, whether it’s people you are caring for, family members or friends.
This update featured in the December 2020/January 2021 Mental Health Nursing journal (Vol 40 #6). For those who aren’t Unite/MHNA members, you can buy your copy online via PocketMags or join and get 6 copies per year posted to your home and access to our back-issues online.
Part of me has been really looking forward to writing an update that consigns 2020 to history. I’m sure I’ve been told not to wish my life away but it’s how I’ve felt at times this year.
I do worry that 2021 might not see a return to pre-2020 normality. But the news of multiple COVID-19 vaccines has been a huge boost and I’ve put my name down to help with the national vaccination effort in England. I know members will be playing their part in your respective countries.
In what I’ve already said I can recognise the privileged place it comes from. The thought of 2019 normality, the chance to go on holidays again, to mix with family and friends, are all positive. For many people in our society 2019-style normality isn’t a great option either.
In November I attended the virtual launch of the final report from the Centre for Mental Health’s Commission for Equality in Mental Health. The report highlighted concerted action from national and local government, public services and civil society is needed to tackle and reverse inequalities in mental health. You can read the report, watch the recorded live stream launch event and get some thoughts from me on the Twitter thread I made on the day.
Other documents of note released since my last update include the Skills for Health ‘Mental Health Nursing: Competence and Career Framework’. On its launch day I reflected on how ridiculous it felt that my first involvement in this document was ‘only’ in January 2020, when I made my first work trip of the year to London. You can find a few highlights from the document on the Twitter thread, but I would encourage you all to take a closer look too.
Following our themed edition on suicide in February 2020 (which members can still access on PocketMags), on p15 we have an article from Dr Khadj Rouf, the chair of Unite’s Applied Psychology, on helping people who feel suicidal.
I’ve previously reported on work in England to address the increased rates of nurse and midwife suicide. This work continues and is joined this month by guidance from Prerana Issar, chief people officer at NHS England, to look at all work place disciplinary policies. I’d encourage our members and reps to raise this issue through local negotiation and consultancy arrangements.
Many of the topics in this update and elsewhere in this journal have been explored in more detail in our weekly #mhTV episodes. For example, the Centre for Mental Health’s Commission for Equality in Mental Health highlighted a number of minoritised groups. We discussed LGBTQI+ on episode 6 and #BlackLivesMatter on episode 11. Chloe Mortimer-Stokes’ article on p22 highlights drug policy, which was covered in episode 17, and Dr Rouf mentioned moral injury which was covered in episode 8. We also headed to Wales in episode 19 and Scotland in episode 21.
We take a short break for Christmas, but before that we will be doing a review of 2020 with some special guests, and we’ve got more great guests lined up for January, when we’ll be going live every Wednesday at 7pm. You can see past episodes on Facebook or YouTube, or book future episode reminders at http://mhna. eventbrite.com.
As always, this is just the surface of all the work that’s ongoing. If you want more updates follow me on Twitter @davidamunday. As always I also would love to hear from you via dave.munday@unitetheunion.org.
I want to finish by saying a huge thanks to all those Unite/MHNA members who have helped me in 2020, especially those on our national committees. While it has been a rough year, it has been a privilege to support the work of mental health nurses. After all, your work has been immense this year. Thank you for it, merry Christmas and a happy New Year!
This update featured in the August/September 2020 Mental Health Nursing journal (Vol 40 #5). For those who aren’t Unite/MHNA members, you can buy your copy online via PocketMags or join and get 6 copies per year posted to your home and access to our back-issues online.
As we face winter with the prospect of the second wave of COVID-19 coming hot on the heels of the first wave, with only a slight lessening of the pressure while we all ate out to help out, this evening it does feel difficult to write this update.
I would be lying if I said that I had found the last few months easy. In some respects, my family has adapted to the new normal as best we can but in others it has been so very difficult.
I find myself constantly reflecting on how, even though it has felt so hard, I know that others will be in much worse and challenging situations than me and my loved ones. A constant feature of work recently has been talking about the support that healthcare staff deserve.
One of the points that I made in the debate was the importance of including students in the scope of the work, while recognising that this needs to be alongside developing our understanding of the particular issues that they will have.
I am pleased that we have focused this edition of Mental Health Nursing on students, teaching and learning, and I read with interest the excellent contributions of students and academics.
Early in October I joined national leaders in discussing how students will be supported through the second wave. I think it was positive to hear how organisations had considered their responses from the first wave and considered how they can do things differently this time.
Again, it was good to be able to influence their thinking with feedback from student mental health nurses who have been in touch with me.
If you look back to my updates from 2019, you will see that I reported on hopes that we would give a loud voice to mental health nursing in this year’s International Year of The Nurse and Midwife.
With one casualty of the COVID-19 pandemic being the face-to-face International Mental Health Nurse Research Conference, which should have been held earlier this year at Middlesex University, we used #mhTV as a way to resurrect the event as a fully online conference.
By the time we turned off the camera on the ninth episode of this huge undertaking, over 8,000 people had seen something about the event either via our Facebook page, YouTube channel or podcast. Each of the episodes and all of the presentations can still be viewed on our pages.
By the time you read this we will also have partnered with colleagues who run the Skellern Lecture, a prestigious annual celebration of advances in mental health and mental health nursing, to bring you the 2020 event.
This update featured in the August/September 2020 Mental Health Nursing journal (Vol 40 #4). For those who aren’t Unite/MHNA members, you can buy your copy online via PocketMags or join and get 6 copies per year posted to your home and access to our back-issues online.
Although may aspects of life still retain a certain level of unsualness, despite some politicians’ efforts to make sure we head back to anywhere that has a bank card reader, some aspects of my job have certainly gone back to the old normal.
For a few weeks since my last update I’ve been working with our members in one trust in the North East, Yorkshire & the Humber. During July the organisation ran a consultation to reorganise their 0-19 year-old services.
Normally this would have been ‘problematic’ as running a consultation while services transition into the school holidays would have been unwise.
To do it during a global pandemic while some people are trying to take a moment’s breath as we navigate from the first wave into a potential second wave is even more difficult. Supporting our members in both groups and via individual discussions has been ‘different’ in that we are having to use video-conference software.
At the same time, the health professionals are having one-to-one meetings with managers and competitive job interviews, and this has also been difficult for staff.
I’m sure we’ll all talk about the comparison often over the next few months, but the way these health professionals are being treated now in comparison with the original COVID-19 message of money not being an object and staff getting their weekly applause, is deplorable.
Impact on newborns
More and more organisations are reporting the impact that coronavirus is having on our population, some of which is being highlighted in this journal. As I write this, the ink has only just dried on a new report from three First 1,001 Critical Days members, ‘Babies in Lockdown’.
As the report highlights: ‘Over 200,000 babies were born when lockdown was at its most restrictive, between 23 March and 4 July.’ The survey of 5,474 respondents suggests that the impact of COVID-19 on these babies could be severe and may be longlasting. The report also found:
6 in 10 (61%) parents shared significant concerns about their mental health.
A quarter (24%) of pregnant respondents who cited mental health as a main concern said they would like help with this, rising to almost a third (32%) of those with a baby.
Only around 3 in 10 (32%) were confident that they could find help for their mental health if they needed it.
Almost 9 in 10 (87%) parents were more anxious as a result of COVID-19 and the lockdown. There was a notable variation among respondents who reported feeling ‘a lot’ more anxious: White 42%, Black/ Black British 46%, Asian/Asian British 50%, parents 25 years old or under 54%, and parents with a household income of less than £16k 55%.
Suicide by female nurses
Another recent report is ‘Suicide by female nurses: a brief report’, authored by the National Confidential Inquiry into Suicide and Safety in Mental Health. This was commissioned by NHS England/NHS Improvement in response to a report by the Office for National Statistics that identified female nurses as having a risk of suicide 23% above the risk in women in other occupations. The report says:
281 nurses who died by suicide were identified over the six-year study period; of these 204 (73%) were female – these were the main focus of the study.
Female nurses were older than other women who died by suicide; nearly half were aged 45-54 years (n=87, 43%).
The most common method of suicide for female nurses was self-poisoning (42%). • More than half (60%) of female nurses who died were not in contact with mental health services.
102 nurses who died were identified as patients; of these, 81 (79%) were female and their clinical histories were examined further.
Their age distribution was similar to that of nurses in the general population who die by suicide, 40% being aged 45-54 years.
Female nurses who were patients were similar to female patients in other occupations. The main primary diagnoses were affective disorders (59%), followed by personality disorders (19%). Overall 41% had a history of alcohol misuse and 20% reported a history of drug misuse. Nearly two-thirds of female nurses had a history of self-harm (64%).
Self-poisoning accounted for 48% of the deaths by female nurses. The main drugs taken were psychotropics (33%), opiates (31%), and paracetamol (19%).
Although prevalence of experiencing adverse life events within three months of death was similar across the groups, female nurses were reported to have more workplace problems (18%).
There were few differences in the care received by the female nurses and by women in other occupations, though it was less common for nurses to have had a previous short psychiatric admission of seven days or fewer, and they were more often prescribed SSRIs/SNRIs.
In response to the report, I was invited to a ‘round table’ by NHS England/NHS Improvement to consider the report and next steps. Attendees emphasised the fact that this report easily predated the current COVID-19 crisis. While the pandemic may reinforce a need to act on the mental health of NHS professionals, it shouldn’t divert attention from the fact that female nurses needed targeted support before January 2020.
At the meeting there was a presentation on early thinking about a package that could be offered. I’d call this early thinking not because of a slow response from professionals but because it is predicated on the commitment on funding (but more on that shortly).
More meetings are planned, and I will of course keep members updated in this journal and on Twitter. As always, if you need any help or support, please do get in touch with your local Unite representative or contact me directly.
People plan and promise
Another long-awaited document has just been published. The NHS Long Term Plan (in England) has had a problematic history with its People Plan derivative.
We have been promised the full People Plan for ages but it has been delayed. Important documents are often like buses – you wait ages for one to come along and when it arrives it’s quickly followed by a second.
Alongside the People Plan we also saw a new People’s Promise, billed as ‘a promise we must all make to each other – to work together to improve the experience of working in the NHS for everyone’. While this contains some important words, at its launch I did question how this would differ from the NHS Constitution, launched in 2012, which set out the ‘rights for patients, public and staff’. I put the following question to Matt Hancock and Prerana Issar, NHS England/ NHS Improvement’s chief people officer:
The People Plan did mention mental health nursing, although only to say: ‘…and the development of bespoke Return to Practice and preceptorship programmes for mental health nursing’.
Again, on launch day I highlighted that this falls far short of the promise Matt Hancock made in 2018 at the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Mental Health.
I also said that the day before I’d been involved in the All England Learning Disability Nursing Steering Group and had highlighted how their profession needed to see recognition of the work required to grow their profession. Learning disability nursing didn’t even get a mention.
Matt Hancock also made an appearance at the Royal College of Physicians to talk about his solution for all the problems in the NHS. You can watch the talk online. I felt it was a confused presentation. He invoked the spirits of David Lloyd George, Horatio Nelson, Martin Luther King and George Orwell while talking about his seven lessons.
One of my criticisms of his speech was picked up by Nursing Times, where he seemed to be suggesting that NMC revalidation was one of the “bureaucratic barnacles” that needed removing. You can read more about that at https://bit. ly/30x6I79, or look at the thread about the launch and Hancock’s speech at: https:// bit.ly/3gLu6DP.
On all-England plans, a similar steering group has been created for mental health nursing and I attended the first virtual meeting last month. Again I’ll be sharing more on this in this journal and on Twitter.
I hope this plan will reference and be influenced by a few other pieces of work. One is the NMC’s work on post-registration specialist practice qualifications. I’ve been involved in this work and encourage any members who have an interest to join the upcoming webinar focused on mental health nursing. You can find out more information about that via the NMC’s website.
Tune in for #mhTV
In my last update, I highlighted the work we’ve done on #mhTV. Our weekly episodes are reaching about 1,000 people via the live stream on a Thursday at 7pm, and you can watch on catch-up via our Facebook and YouTube pages or listen along on our podcast, #MHpod. You can find the links to subscribe on p21.
Recent episodes have included #BlackLivesMatter, co-occurring mental health and substance use issues during COVID-19, the politics of substance use, moral injury, the Euripides Study, LGBTQI+ and student mental health nurse voices. We also did a wider Unite in Health session with the NMC and the Health Care Professions Council (HCPC) about regulation during COVID-19.
This update featured in the April/May 2020 Mental Health Nursing journal (Vol 40 #2). For those who aren’t Unite/MHNA members, you can buy your copy online via PocketMags or join and get 6 copies per year posted to your home and access to our back-issues online.
As I write this from my kitchen table on bank holiday Monday, now a scene of many a Microsoft Teams, Zoom, WebEx, GoToMeeting, Skype and WhatsApp Video over the last few weeks, it feels amazing that it’s only 25 days since my email to MHNA members to thank you for your efforts so far, in the battles against COVID-19.
So much has happened to our nation and our health service in such a short period of time.
In my responses to various people and organisations in recent weeks as your lead professional officer, I have repeatedly highlighted how we have entered a global pandemic with a much-weakened NHS and society.
It has struck after 10 years of austerity, where the poorest have suffered the most, and a mental health service that has faced cuts, including the 8.2% (between May 2010 and December 2019) drop in the number of mental health nurses working in England’s NHS.
While the government has taken dramatic action in some areas as a result of the pandemic, only time will tell whether this will be a continued change of heart after the initial impact of coronavirus is known.
Key areas of concern
There have been three key areas of concern that members have raised
the most frequently: the number of people working in the health service; the availability and supply of personal protective equipment to health service staff and other key workers; and the availability of COVID-19 testing for members of staff.
These are obviously all singularly important issues, but they also have a co-dependence on each other.
Alongside my role in supporting mental health nurses in Unite, I also have a role supporting our ambulance staff members.
Their concerns also highlight this co-dependency well. For example, one of our representatives has reported that her service, on that particular day, faced a 30% vacancy rate.
The rep providing the report was at home self-isolating as she had a new cough, and was feeling unsure whether she was infected, after having crewed her ambulance without the required range of PPE available.
PPE guidance
As you’ll see elsewhere in this edition, Unite has welcomed the updated PPE guidance issued by the UK public health organisations and the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges, although we remain acutely concerned about the levels of supply and distribution.
On this, I would like to offer my thanks to our lead reps from both MHNA and the Applied Psychology Organising Professional Committee, who have suffered the daily requests for feedback that I have made of them, alongside the jobs that they are doing in the NHS, the university sector and elsewhere.
Student views
This edition of the journal also picks out two other areas that have consumed time and effort.
It is great that we have been able to feature the reflections of three student nurses on how the coronavirus pandemic has impacted on them and their studies, so I send my thanks to the authors Charlotte, Ashleigh and Sandra for their insightful and thoughtful contributions.
Alongside my fellow lead professional officer and lead for regulation Jane Beach, I have been involved in regular discussions with the Nursing and Midwifery Council and others about the progress of changing students’ progress to registration.
Any questions should hopefully now be answered by the relevant guides in each of the four UK countries.
However, if any of our student nurse members have any questions, comments or concerns, please do not hesitate to get in touch with me.
Also, if you are a student then please consider sharing your experience and reflections on the coronavirus situation, and our regular Student Focus feature is the perfect publication opportunity for this. Email the editor via mhneditor@gmail.com if you would like to contribute.
This issue of Mental Health Nursing also includes a welcome piece by Simon Hall from the University of the West of England, on the importance of mental health nurses, especially during the pandemic.
This has also been an area that has required much thought and consideration.
As in ‘normal’ times, people with mental ill health often get put to the back of the healthcare queue.
It would be a further travesty if this situation is furthered during COVID-19, with various attempts to divert mental health professionals to the ‘physical health fight’.
We have already opposed some plans that have been proposed nationally, which would have had exactly this impact.
Support is vital
It is clear that it will take a long time for the true impact of COVID-19 to become known.
What we know now, however, is that as well as a large death toll, the nation’s mental health will be impacted. And a significant part of this will be the mental health of key workers.
This could mean phoning a helpline or talking with your colleagues, friends or family. It could also mean getting in touch with your local Unite workplace reps or contacting me.
Such support is vital, and we will all need these support mechanisms over the days, weeks and months ahead.
This update featured in the February/March 2020 Mental Health Nursing journal (Vol 40 #1). For those who aren’t Unite/MHNA members, you can buy your copy online via PocketMags or join and get 6 copies per year posted to your home and access to our back-issues online.
The UK has now left the European Union, having ‘got Brexit done’. As I mentioned in a recent email to MHNA members, I have personally found the last few weeks since the December general election really difficult. You won’t be surprised to hear that it did not go the way I hoped.
On the morning after the election I sent out a tweet reflecting on the frustration I felt in having to ameliorate/sort out/solve/paper over cracks, as the NHS is facing many problems.
During the election we heard repeated Conservative Party ‘promises’ of 50,000 more nurses, 40 ‘new’ hospitals, no selling off of the NHS to the US as part of a way of securing a post-Brexit trade deal, and a reversal of 10 years of austerity – and we have seen how hollow these promises were.
The 50,000 more nurses was quickly shown to be actually trying to keep 19,000 more nurses than those already projected to leave the NHS by 2024/25. At the same time, a leak revealed that the plans for more nurses, formulated by NHS England & Improvement, were also predicated on substituting some of those registered nurses with 10,200 nursing associates.
Although I feel cynical about what will happen next, I have repeatedly sought reassurance that figures and plans will be forthcoming on what will happen to speed up the reversal of the 9.7% cut (or 3,934) in mental health nurses in the NHS between May 2010 and September 2019. As a side note, I have also been involved in discussions on learning disability nursing (which has seen even more significant cuts in the NHS) and in achieving some improvements to arrangements for clinical psychology and child psychotherapy education funding.
We are already one-twelfth of the way through the #YearOfTheNurseAndMidwife, marking the 200th anniversary of Florence Nightingale’s birth. Last year I was involved in a number of discussions about how we can make sure this year isn’t too England/hospital/adult/acute nurse focused. Excellent allies in this have been the Mental Health Nurse Academics UK group, of which I am an associate member, and for whom Unite hosted the quarterly meeting in Glasgow.
Nicky Lambert, MHNAUK member, associate professor at Middlesex University, and member of our editorial board, is working hard to make sure this happens too. Alongside Nicky and a number of other MHNAUK members I have submitted an abstract to the upcoming Florence Nightingale Conference highlighting a range of contemporary issues for mental health nurses. We also have a range of work that we will be doing throughout 2020.
For example, over the next few months, we will be offering a number of opportunities for MHNA members to get some excellent education updates. On 27 March we will be in Edinburgh, and on 24 April we will visit Cardiff, for joint seminars with our sister professional association in Unite, the Community Practitioners’ and Health Visitors’ Association (CPHVA). I will email members directly with details on how to book and what is in store for attendees.
We are also repeating our support of Nursing in Practice events in 2020. I will be in Belfast on 26 February and in Glasgow on 3 March, so if you can make it to either event, please make sure you say hello. There will be a number of conferences across the UK, and further details can be found on the back page of this edition.
Last year we produced four episodes of The Mental Health Podcast, and I have been working on series two. The first episodes will be on money and mental health, and may be out by the time you’re reading this edition. Either way, sign up for the podcast, which will mean you will get alerts each time a new episode gets released. There are details on how to do this on p11.
As always, there is lots going on. If you have been following me on Twitter since my last update, you will have also got lots of bite-sized chunks of information about the events I have attended. Just two examples of these were the Nursing and Midwifery Council’s event to celebrate the 100th anniversary of nursing regulation and the Health Service Journal’s Transforming Mental Health Care conference (day 1 / day 2). If these have whet your appetite, please do follow me on Twitter (@davidamunday) and don’t be afraid to join in the conversation.
I wanted to finish this update by saying a big thank you to colleagues at the Zero Suicide Alliance – not just for the work they have done since their launch, but also for working with us to put together this special edition. As we have so much excellent content, we will be running a follow-up edition.
This update featured in the December 2019/January 2020 Mental Health Nursing journal (Vol 39 #6). For those who aren’t Unite/MHNA members, you can buy your copy online via PocketMags or join and get 6 copies per year posted to your home and access to our back-issues online.
For this edition of my update, I was thinking about our decision a while ago to move publication date to the 12th of the month. This has a number of benefits for our members but for this, our December 2019/January 2020 edition, it feels like a real mistake. With our bi-monthly publication it means that the last edition was published before the dissolution of parliament, on 6 November and the general election on 12 December.
So, I sit here writing this not knowing the outcome, and knowing this will hit your doorstep when you (and I) do. The pre-election period, sometimes more commonly known as purdah, has been rather frustrating. Whether honestly, or dishonestly, it has acted as a brake on some of the work that was urgently needed to move forward, especially in England, on the NHS Long Term Plan Full People Plan.
This will shorten the window even more so on what actions can be taken to ensure we have the massive increase in mental health nurse students that we need in 2020/21. Whatever the outcome in a couple of week’s time, I will continue to demand action from whoever takes up residence in Number 10.
While the 2017 election manifestos were all pretty similar with the number of mentions of mental health, this hasn’t been the case in 2019. Both the Labour Party and the Liberal Democrats have maintained frequent mentions of ‘mental health’, including promises to implement the review of the mental health act in full, yet the Conservative Party manifesto has been rather less so forthcoming on detail and has much fewer mentions.
Although I’m not able to discuss and debate the different merits of the manifestos here, I did have the opportunity to discuss it at Stafford University recently, as I was invited to speak to over 100 students on the politics of mental health nursing. My message to them: get involved!
Another impact of the pre-election period was an exodus of civil servants from the recent Health Service Journal summit on mental health. I was asked after whether we had fulfilled the sub-title of the conference and transformed mental health services. I had to reply that we hadn’t lived up to that billing but hopefully with our efforts to influence political parties and the outcome of the general election, we would be playing our part. Another frustrating calendar issue has been news that we are supporting the Mental Health Nurse of the Year award from the British Journal of Nursing. Those members who have an email on record with us, and allow contact, will have had a couple of emails encouraging nominations. We wanted to support this award because we know about the massive positive impact our mental health nurse members have, and editorial board member Athia Manawar and I are really looking forward to awarding the trophy in March 2020.
In October I was in Scotland to attend the quarterly meeting of the Mental Health Nurse Academics UK (MHNAUK) group of which I, on behalf of MHNA, am an associate member.
In this instance, the MHNA was pleased to act as host, which meant I was given the opportunity to provide the first session, both on our work for 2019 and plans for 2020. At this, and subsequent meetings of other groups, I’ve been able to talk about our hopes and plans to make sure next year’s ‘Year of the Nurse’ isn’t just a ‘hospital based, adult, acute nursing’ celebration.
Linked to this is this month’s ‘Inside the mind of…’ featuring the Nursing and Midwifery Council’s chief executive Andrea Sutcliffe (see p20). I have been pedantic in encouraging the NMC to remember the importance of those nurses not often spoken about.
It was therefore good to hear mental health nursing getting a mention at the recent celebration event marking the 100th birthday of nursing registration. I, alongside Unite in Health’s lead for regulation Jane Beach, was pleased to attend the event and get, what became, our highly sort-after pin badges. As usual, I was able to report to members the goings on via Twitter.
To finish this update, I want to say a big thank you to all our MHNA members, committee members and representatives, for the support you’ve shown me, and each other, in 2019.
I take great pride in leading representation, on behalf of you as a group of professionals, and if I didn’t get to meet or speak to you in 2019, I hope 2020 might be the year. Have a merry Christmas and a happy New Year.
adaywithdave 