Professional Nurse Advocate role and staff wellbeing within health in justice

The CNO highlighted the need for nurses to be equipped to understand the demands of their role. The role provides a much needed platform to focus and support the wellbeing of our nursing workforce to support a trauma informed and psychological safe space for nurses to develop both personally and professionally underpinned by the AEQUIP model and Restorative Clinical Supervision. 

Working within Health in Justice can be emotionally demanding and the trauma and challenging incidents that our nursing workforce are exposed to can have both an emotional and physical impact on the individual. We understand that since COVID-19 the resilience of our teams has been tested and staff are at increasing risk of burn out, compassion fatigue and moral injury because of the pressures placed on them. I wanted to develop a culture where staff say it is their right to have supervision and access the support they need.

As a registered Professional Nurse Advocate (PNA) it enables me to focus on the wellbeing of our staff through highlighting the importance of reflective practice and supporting staff through Restorative Clinical Supervision. The structure created is a multi-professional model that is available to all staff working within health in justice, highlighting the value of ad hoc conversations that we can often underestimate. I wanted to create less of a hierarchical system which offers mutual support, supports a compassionate workforce and includes all leaders to improve professional practice and wellbeing. My aim was to move away from a structured, prescriptive way of delivering supervision to opportunities of having a ‘chat over a cup of tea’ or ‘asking if someone is ok in the staff room’. This is to not say that planned structured sessions are not important but there are other opportunities to think outside of the box to embed positive supervision cultures.

I am keen to develop a just culture across our workforce where staff feel safe to speak up or share good practice with their colleagues. As part of this work we are working with the Foundation of Nursing Studies to roll out Restorative Clinical Supervision across the organisation and develop a train the trainer model. 

Excitingly we have established a monthly peer network meeting and a Community of Practice to learn and share good practice amongst our community of PNAs.

Moving forward we are exploring how our PNAs can be equipped further to support our Protected Characteristic communities and intersectionality across Health in Justice.