Responding to traumatic events in the workplace

Julie Highfield

Consultant Clinical Psychologist ,

Dr Julie Highfield is a Consultant Clinical Psychologist & Lead for Organisational Health in Adult and Paediatric Critical Care, Cardiff. She is the National Project Director for Wellbeing in the Intensive Care Society. She has a long experience of working as a psychologist in medical and health care settings and works closely with staff in their experience of working in healthcare, as well as advising managers on matters of workforce wellbeing. Julie has worked with the British Psychological Society and its Division of Clinical Psychology in Wales. She led the BPS team writing the National Guidance for Staff in the Coronavirus Pandemic.

Julie works with the Welsh Assembly Government in various projects, including as the lead for Critical Care Workforce Task and Finish Group, and Modelling for Rehabilitation for patients post COVID-19, and the Wellbeing Conversation Tool. She has a number of publications and book chapters in the field of critical care, staff wellbeing, and leadership.

 

: @DrJulie_H

Morwenna Maddock

Lead Nurse,

Mo Maddock is a dedicated matron in Intensive Care at North Bristol NHS Trust with a remarkable 16-year tenure in the field. Her commitment to staff wellbeing has been a driving force throughout her career. In 2020, she embraced the opportunity to collaborate with Professor Richard Williams and Verity Kemp, leading North Bristol's ICU to become the pioneering pilot site for Peer Support in Critical Care. The initiative's success prompted Julie Highfield alongside Mo,  Professor Williams and Verity Kemp, to design a comprehensive training package for the Intensive Care Society. This training now supports the rollout of Peer Support programs across critical care services nationwide, and Mo continues to play a crucial role in facilitating these courses.

Adrian Neal

Consultant Clinical Psychologist and Head of Staff Wellbeing,

Dr Adrian Neal BA, MA, MSc, DClinPsych, CPsychol 

Consultant Clinical Psychologist. Head of Wellbeing for Aneurin Bevan University Health Board.   

 

Adrian qualified as a Clinical Psychologist in 2003 and for the first 10 years worked within NHS England Adult, Community, and Acute Adult Mental Health Services. He was also a part time Lecturer Practitioner on the Coventry and Warwick Universities Clinical Psychology Doctorate.

After completing an MSc in Organisational Psychology, he has specialised in Occupational Health and Wellbeing within the public sector. Moving to South Wales in 2014 to take up the role of Head of Wellbeing within Aneurin Bevan University Health Board (ABUHB) he has subsequently collaborated with a number of public sector organisations both within the UK and internationally. These have included the Welsh Ambulance Service, Welsh NHS Finance Academy, Gwent Police, Emergency Medical Retrieval and Transfer Service (EMRTS), London Air Ambulance, Health Education and Innovation Wales (HEIW), National Academy of Education Leaders (Wales), Social Care Wales, Welsh Government, The Kings Fund and the Institute of Health Innovation.   

Adrian views occupational psychosocial factors such as leadership, culture and psychological safety as the cornerstones to organisational health and wellbeing, and ultimately sustainability, and co-leads the innovative Leading People leadership programme within Aneurin Bevan University Health Board.

Adrian is also Past Co-Chair of the Applied Psychologists in Health National Special Advisory Group, past Co-chair of the Division of Clinical Psychology’s (DCP) Leadership and Management Faculty, and DCP Wales, and Chaired the British Psychological Society’s 2020 working group examining the impact of the pandemic on practitioner psychologist’s wellbeing. 

Adrian is a postgraduate academic supervisor at Cardiff, Cardiff Metropolitan, and Plymouth universities and has published academic articles and book chapters relating to mental health, occupational health, organisational culture, leadership and occupational well-being. In 2022 Adrian jointly won the Association of Business Psychology’s Excellence in Strategy award, and in 2023 his team won NHS Wales awards for both ‘Wellbeing Interventions’ and overall outstanding submission for their Avoidable Employee Harm initiative.      

Chris Hingston

Consultant Intensivist ,

Chris is a Consultant in Critical Care at the University Hospital of Wales, Cardiff. He is also a Consultant in Pre-hospital Emergency Medicine, working for the Emergency Medical Retrieval and Transfer Service (EMRTS) Cymru, with the Wales Air Ambulance charity. He is an Honorary Senior lecturer at Bangor University, involved with delivering the MSc in Advanced Helicopter Emergency Services (HEMS) course.

He has an interest in human factors and non-technical skills, developed whilst working with Sydney HEMS, going on to become an accredited instructor. He is the author of the human factors chapter in the recently published Oxford Textbook of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine and has taught widely on the subject over more than a decade. He also has interests in diagnostic error and major incident management.

Jane Sturgess

Associate Dean HEE,

Jane is a consultant anaesthetist who has worked in both tertiary teaching and district general hospitals.

As an educator she has been a clinical supervisor, an educational supervisor, a foundation training programme director and is currently an Associate Dean for Faculty Development in East of England.

She has held numerous leadership positions and posts in patient safety and is trained in QI methodology including LEAN.

She has published on Consent, and essential legal matters for medics. 

Stephen Regel

Honorary Professor, Founder, Centre for Trauma, Resilience and Growth ,

Stephen founded the Centre for Trauma, Resilience and Growth (CTRG), a specialist NHS trauma service in 1998 where he spent the last 25 years as  the Clinical Lead. Over the past four decades he has worked with a wide range of trauma survivors, including first responders, the NHS and other services. Between 2004 -2021 he was a member of the British Red Cross Psychosocial Support Team, supporting UK nationals affected by major incidents abroad. He has been training professionals in Peer Support & CISM for almost  four decades, having worked with the UNHCR in Kosovo after the NATO invasion,  the International Red Cross Peer Support initiative and developed the British Red Cross Peer Support programme for the emergency and crisis teams. He has also  worked with staff in his local ICU, Critical Care and Burns Units, providing staff support and clinical interventions as appropriate as well as providing remote staff support to ICU and other staff during the pandemic whilst in his Red Cross role.  He continues to provide training in CISM & Peer Support, nationally and internationally and has published on workplace trauma support including staff support in Burns and Critical care etc. He retired from the NHS at the end of '22 after over 50 years.

Matthew Edmondson

Anaesthetics Trainee,

CT3 Core Anaesthetics trainee 

I'm an anaesthetics trainee with an interest in intensive care medicine and our responses to difficult situations in the workplace. I've been based in the Severn and Peninsula deaneries for my training and currently in an anaesthetics CT3 post at the Royal Devon and Exeter hospital.

Becky Harris

Senior Health & Wellbeing Manager/TRiM Manager,

I have worked at University Hospitals of Leicester for 25 years qualifying as a nurse in 1999. My career as a nurse for over 20 years working in acute medicine mainly cardiology, provided me a wealth of knowledge and experience in caring for patients and relatives, and latterly becoming a deputy sister on my last ward. I am so very proud to call myself a Nurse- it’s a wonderful profession.

In 2014, I was recruited into the Health and Wellbeing Team and I have never looked back since. The global pandemic has taught us many things around the need for mental wellbeing support but as a team we were conscious of this already. The demands that healthcare provision has on an individual is undeniable and feelings of compassion fatigue and stress were glaring obvious then. I have since this time trained as a Mental Health First Aid Instructor and TRiM Manager.

As healthcare professionals we normalise what we see. I experienced this far too many times as have my colleagues. Interventions such as TRiM and Mental Health First Aid have changed our perspective, highlighting a traumatic event as abnormal and our feelings as normal. This has been a game changer I believe for our organisation as it allows colleagues to feel and not to feel ashamed.