NHS staff of “all levels” have been involved in co-creating an app called ShinyMind that aims to provide support with wellbeing and resilience.
Originally founded by psychotherapist Rebecca Howard, ShinyMind began as a live mindset programme called ‘Your Mindset, Your Choice’ to support NHS staff. Across 12 months, this psychological development programme is intended to help NHS staff including GPs and managers to develop their understanding of resilience, self-awareness, confidence and more.
The ShinyMind app was then co-created with the Walton Centre NHS Foundation Trust staff “of all levels” to “ensure it worked for real people”.
The app aims to provide 24/7 support through multi-modular interactive resources with over 150 masterclass tools and exercises for people to learn and explore, and is designed to be personalised, intuitive and responsive.
Co-designed alongside their secondment from NHS England and Improvement and the Nursing Advisory Board, ShinyMind is launching a nursing version to provide support to over 500,000 nurses, midwives and healthcare support workers across the NHS.
In addition, “as a result of benefitting from using ShinyMind personally”, clinicians from across the NHS have been leading patient trials to build up evidence that ShinyMind can positive support patients with anxiety, depression and other long-term conditions, with support from NHS England and Improvement, Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) and Public Health England.
The website states: “This has led to the launch of ShinyMind as a new ‘wellbeing prescription’ digital platform and staff empowerment ‘Shine’ programme to help address the increasing demand upon primary care services, to provide proactive and personalised care to prevent ill-health across the patient populations, and improve the wellbeing of the primary care family as outlined in the NHS Fuller Stocktake report.
The website shares some recent research from NHS nurses in October 2022, which indicated that 94 percent said that ShinyMind helps them feel better; 77 percent feel more able to manage their health and wellbeing; and 60 percent feel that their understanding of others has improved.
ShinyMind has been recognised as ‘Outstanding Practice’ by the CQC, has been assessed by the Academic Health Science Networks, and showcased as a ‘Proven Innovation’ on the Innovation Agency Exchange, which means that it is suitable for widescale adoption.
To find out more about ShinyMind, click here.
