Supporting Your Team During a Pandemic

If you are leading or managing a team:

• ensure good quality communication and accurate information updates are provided to all staff – consider a WhatsApp group among your colleagues if that suits your needs
• rotate workers from high-stress to lower-stress functions routinely rather than based on a staff member identifying their need to be rotated
• partner inexperienced workers with their more experiences colleagues. A ‘buddy’ system may help to provide support, monitor stress and reinforce safety procedures
• initiate, encourage and monitor work breaks
• implement flexible schedules for workers who are directly impacted or have a family member impacted by a stressful event
• actively monitor team members and remain vigilant for signs of stress; adopt a ‘nip it in the bud’ approach rather than waiting for people to become unwell or experience a crisis
• managers and team leads are also facing similar stressors as their staff, and often additional pressure in the level of responsibility of their role. It is important that the above provisions and strategies are in place for both workers and managers, and that managers are able to role-model self-care strategies to mitigate stress.

Organisations will be required to reorganise tasks to ensure clinical time is released to focus on delivering direct patient care. This may mean that staff vulnerable to high communicable diseases, or non-clinical staff are asked to fulfil non-direct patient contact tasks to free up direct clinical capacity.

If working remotely, you will need to consider how you will deliver work as a team - what collaborative working platforms will be used, how you will communicate and how you support each other through challenges. Some of it might be trial and error so it is also important to think about how you will reflect on what’s working and what isn’t.

As part of business continuity planning, all teams should consider what service it can deliver with reduced staff numbers and how it will cope with various scenarios. In particular:

• Clear lines of delegation
  • Consultants and team leaders/managers need to have clear lines of delegation in case they are incapacitated.
• Safe communication
  • During this period, safe communication of complex clinical information will continue to be critical within teams.
  • Maintain good communication with colleagues/trainees even when isolated or working from home (e.g. daily brief medical wellbeing hubs (catch ups) in units/team via skype/telephone).
  • Local solutions should be found for doing this in the most appropriate way to enable social distancing e.g. several staff members coming together in a small office should be avoided and alternative methods of meeting together introduced. This will also have implications for ward rounds and meetings in in-patient settings, and alternatives to group gatherings must be sought.
• Difficult decision-making and incidents
  • If in doubt, please ask your peers/colleagues and provide support and supervision when colleagues come to you. This is the time to break artificial barriers and work together to keep both staff and patients safe.
• Getting additional staff
  • Discuss with your local voluntary organisation including willing members of public (university students, volunteers, retired staff) who can provide support if resources are depleted. However, be mindful of precautionary steps.
  • Look to get staff from other industries (i.e. those that have recently lost jobs (travel, hospitality etc)) and encourage them to work in your healthcare organisation.
• Staff redeployment
  • At times of crisis, local mental health services may be asked to assist general health services.
  • This may be done after ensuring that patients with mental illness continue to receive the care and support that they need