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My name is Helen. I am one of the ICU sisters at the Royal Berkshire Hospital and I am also a Professional Nurse Advocate.

The role of the PNA was introduced by Chief Nurse Ruth May in 2021. Critical Care was chosen to be the pilot group of nurses to be trained as PNAs. I completed my PNA training at Plymouth University in August 2021. The PNA role supports nurses’ wellbeing through Restorative Clinical Supervision or RCS, using a model of Supervision called A-EQUIP. The role also supports nurses with their professional development, maintenance of quality standards and quality improvement. The easiest way to explain how this works is, I can provide a safe confidential space either for a group or an individual whereby those nurses can process the emotional demands which working in healthcare brings. By providing these spaces, it helps to restore the nurses’ thinking capacity and ability to engage with things like their professional development, quality improvement and also supports them to develop the skills and tools which we require to maintain our own wellbeing as critical care practitioners.

I officially started working as a PNA just over a year ago on a background of being the Lead for Wellbeing in our ICU. I currently do both roles two days a week along with a clinical shift each week. There is overlap with the roles which I love. I am fortunate that our leadership have been so supportive in allowing me to shape the role into what I see the staff in our unit need it to be. This is not a role which we have had before in critical care nursing, so it has been really rewarding, fun and challenging shaping it into what it is today.

My day typically starts around 7:30am. I will see what the unit is like on that day, if there is any specific practical help needed. We do try to protect the PNA time, but of course if the need is greatest on the unit, I go to help with patient care and at the same time I can have a quick check in with the staff on duty that day. I usually like to have some of my day planned in advance, this can be a booked session of RCS with members of the team, a career conversation or help with interview preparation. We also use the PNA time to support our new nurses so I will check in with them, find out how their last few shifts have been. See if there is anything from those shifts they would like to discuss, and we can also make time at the end to look at their Step 1 competency booklet.

I will usually send out my availability a few weeks in advance to allow staff to be able to book in sessions with me, but I always keep free space for anything that crops up in the day which I can support. If there have been any difficult situations or shifts on the unit, I will also check in with staff who were involved, and I can signpost them to further support if they feel they need it. We have a great culture in the unit where everyone looks out for everyone else. Lots of our staff feel confident to do a check in or do a Team Immediate Meet post a challenging situation. If they feel a member of the team could benefit from meeting with me or an RCS session, they will signpost them to me or other members of the wellbeing team such as our Psychologist Lissy or our Band 6 Wellbeing nurse Georgia.

I attend nursing inductions to talk about the importance of wellbeing especially working in Critical Care and how my role can support them going forward. Our trust have recently implemented a QI model called ‘Improving Together’ and we have launched this in ICU before Christmas. QI is probably the area of PNA which I need to develop more, and I am learning a lot about this at the moment. We do three QI huddles on the unit a week of which I lead one. Essentially it involves all of the front line MDT and support staff. Staff who have a QI idea raise a ‘ticket’ which highlights their improvement idea and how they think this could work. This ticket is then discussed at our huddle with the team of the day and we all come up with ways in which we could support this QI. One of two main driver metrics we are looking to improve this year is Staff Experience of which I am the lead. We are currently rolling out a number of different initiatives to enhance our staff experience including improvement works to our working environment and we ran a Humanisation of ICU project in the month of December aimed at increasing our Joy at Work! An idea which was the brainchild of a fellow PNA in the TVWCCN, Helen Gadsby. Some of the things we did included a virtual advent calendar with messages from our past patients, Consultants, CEO and Chief Nurse. We had live music each week of December where we had bands come and play some Christmas Carols for staff and patients.

Linking up with other PNAs and wellbeing champions in the network has been hugely valuable to me and has helped me not only to validate the tough times when getting this off the ground, but also has helped enormously in terms of support, ideas and further training. As you can tell, I could talk about the PNA role forever! I absolutely love my job. I am passionate about nursing and our nurses, not only in terms of their wellbeing but I love to see our nurses gain confidence in themselves and achieve their goals. I really enjoy being a part of their journey. Yes, it has not been easy and there are a lot of challenges but nothing in life worthwhile comes easy, as the saying goes!