DHU Healthcare’s NHS 111 teams have gone more than the extra mile, walking, cycling, running, swimming and even rowing more than 7,500 miles to become more active and create new bonds across the different sites.
As part of a health and wellbeing idea, trialed with our 111 teams with a view to a wider rollout across our DHU sites, it’s the brainchild of 111 Operational Shift Leader Sarah Holbrook alongside DHU’s Health, Wellbeing and Diversity Co-Ordinator Sonia Gale. They developed the step challenge to see if together they could cover 4,500 miles between 6th December 2021 and 6th February 2022.
The 111 service, run by DHU Healthcare, looks after around five million patients across Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire, Leicestershire, Rutland, Northamptonshire, Lincolnshire, Somerset and Wiltshire. Covering such a large area means that many 111 colleagues never meet and, as a lot of the work is telephone based, it can be a sedentary job.
So Sarah and Sonia devised the challenge to get people moving, create a bit of friendly rivalry, bring the teams together and put a spring in their step.
“My colleagues have inspired me…”
Sarah said: “We wanted to encourage people to keep active at a time of year when the majority of us feel like hibernating. The response and involvement has been so wonderful and stories from individuals of how the challenge motivated them to get more active have been really lovely to hear.
“On a personal level, seeing how active some of my colleagues are has inspired me to get out and exercise more so I am really looking forward to the next challenge and being a more ‘active’ participant.”
Sonia added: “Sarah did a fantastic job devising the format and involving the communications team to encourage colleagues to take part. It’s important everyone across our multiple sites feel part of the wider team and initiatives like this make people feel involved, with the added benefit that it encourages a healthier lifestyle.
“Health and wellbeing is such an important part of what we’re trying to achieve at DHU and it ultimately feeds back to the patient. Getting active is just as important to your mental health as it is your physical health and we could see from the feedback that those who took part were galvanised and those who didn’t saw that and want to be a part of the next one.”
Just to add to that competitive edge, a prize was on offer for the team that travelled the furthest and it went to one of the teams based at Chesterfield, ‘Blood, Sweat and Beers’. Together they accounted for more than 1,800 of those miles.
Phil Leedham
Paul Sweeting
Kelly Lomas
“Shows what we can achieve by working together”
Allison Graham is the NHS 111 Non-Clinical Performance Manager and co-captain of the team, she said: “We didn’t have a full team but got talking to another colleague, Chris Tranter, who also had half a team so we merged and brought in one of the night managers. It really did create a buzz. Some of those who didn’t necessarily know about it were asking how we were doing and that healthy rivalry and team pride started to show through.
“It did get me thinking about my own activity, it encouraged me to walk a bit further and I know it had a knock on effect to the team. We reached our goal quite early, by the end of December, but kept going as there was a bigger picture of reaching 4,500 miles between all teams. It just shows what we can achieve when we walk and work together.
“We had a hill walker, runner, one of our team cycled and we had a rower as well which we added to the total. It was great fun and I noticed that a lot of people who may just nod or say ‘hello’ in the corridor stopped and talked about it with us. Even those who weren’t involved were asking how we were doing so I think if we did it again the interest would be higher. It was a very positive thing to do and we all got a lot out of it.”
The team were presented with their medals and individual awards in late February. It’s hoped that the challenge can be repeated, possibly involving more departments and teams, to see how far DHU Healthcare can really go together!
Pictured l-r: Chris Tranter (NCPM) – Paul Sweeting (HA) – Allison Graham (NCPM) – Joanna Whittam (HA) – Phil Leedham (HA) – Jake Appleyard (HA) – Kelly Lomas (HA) – Tamara Clark (NCPM) – David Heaton (HA)