More than 100 nurses and healthcare assistants attended the charity's very first Meaningful Activity Week, which took place earlier this month.

The five-day long campaign was launched to raise awareness of the importance of meaningful activity and the role everyone at St Andrew's Healthcare plays in this. 

The event allowed staff to learn about the importance of accurate recording and promote how engaging with patients aids their mental and physical health.

The Occupational Therapy team and the Communications team came together to host pop-up roadshows across each division, including Birmingham and Essex. 

Jackie Branston, Head of Occupational Therapy, led the charge with support from Fiona Bailey in Communications. Fiona visited each ward and gave them a ward pack that was filled with ideas and information around the event, this included conversation starter tips, card games and other examples of what meaningful activity can look like.

Each day was hosted in the charity’s cafes where there was opportunity to have some refreshments whilst chatting to Jackie.

The wider OT team played a huge part to enable the staff to attend and supported by going to the wards and relieving HCAs so they could head to the café and speak with Jackie.

There, she talked to attendees about what meaningful activity is, why it is so important to patients, whether they are logging it in on the charity's system and what barriers, if any, that restricted them to record.  

Jackie said: “When Fiona and I started talking about this campaign, we knew we wanted to find a way of promoting all the benefits of meaningful activity and therapy. Culturally, I think a lot of our staff thought hosting activities was all down to the OT team, but it’s not.

"All ward staff have a responsibility to their patients to keep them engaged throughout the day. More importantly they are the biggest cohort and our data does not actually represent what’s actually occurring.

“Over the course of the week our aim was to empower our HCAs to start conversations with their patients and we suggested multiple ideas that they could offer for those that were not so experienced. More importantly I talked to so many people during the week, many of whom already do an amazing job and do carry out meaningful activity and log it.

“We want to help staff feel confident in finding strategies and activities to meaningfully connect and engage, while also highlighting the importance of accurate recording to demonstrate that we are facilitating individualised, meaningful therapeutic activities to patients on a daily basis; including weekends and evenings. Every contact counts."