Today is Menopause Awareness Day and here at The Myton Hospices, we are working hard to ensure our staff and volunteers are educated and supported when going through the menopause.
It is no secret that the topic of menopause is not fully understood or discussed enough in the workplace.
We are aiming to educate our staff and volunteers in what the menopause really is in order to transform our workplace conversations.
Over the last couple of months, we have welcomed a variety of guests and hosted some exciting activities for our staff and volunteers.
Earlier in the week, our Wellbeing Coordinator, Emily Young, organised an online training course about the importance of nutrition during the menopause kindly donated by ‘Yourtrainingbank.co.uk’.
We were also visited at our Coventry and Warwick Hospices by Dr Tony Parsons and Dr Katharine Parsons to speak with our staff about the medical side of the menopause, answering many questions that they were able to put forward.
Emily has also arranged for Sian Gulliver of Little Light Studio in Cubbington to run a ‘menopause yoga’ session at our Warwick Myton Hospice later this week!
However, activity to support menopause awareness throughout Myton has not been limited to this week.
Due to feedback from our bi-monthly Wellness Check In, we researched our staff needs further by producing and circulating a survey and introducing a drop box in our Inpatient Units so our nurses can easily have their say in what they’d like to see happen regarding the menopause throughout the organisation.
In addition to this, we made handheld fans available to staff within both our Inpatient Units to help with hot flushes in response to staff feedback.
In February, we welcomed our first menopause guest speaker, Julie Smith, from Natural Mental Healthcare Solutions to take us through breathing and relaxation techniques to aid menopause symptoms. It was extremely beneficial for all who attended.
Our Menopause Meet-Ups are also hugely successful with employees meeting bi-monthly in an informal environment to chat and share ideas about what is working for them.
Emily also hosted a ‘pop-up’ menopause meet-up by each Inpatient Unit for a day to help our ward staff access the services to support with menopause.
In March we hosted a virtual talk by Menopause Coach, Sarah Cox from Don’t Pause for Menopause, taking us through all aspects of menopause and how we can adopt different habits to aid the symptoms.
Deepak Lodhia joined us in April from Blue Circle Health Care a neighbouring building to Coventry Myton Hospice providing a session on the pharmaceutical and emotional intelligence aspects to the menopause.
Harriet Saxton, a health Coach from ‘Harriet’s Healthy Living’, came to Warwick Myton Hospice in July to donate a wonderful session to a small group of interested staff about how to naturally boost hormones that support the menopause.
We have also introduced a best practice guide and toolkit for our managers to ensure our employees are treated fairly and with respect and compassion when experiencing menopause symptoms and can have a supportive wellbeing conversation about this. All of these resources can be located in our brand new Wellbeing Hub.
We have built a strong relationship with the founder of the charity Menopause Support, Diane Danzebrink who has kindly provided 100 free copies of the ‘Understanding Menopause’ booklet that she developed in conjunction with the British Menopause Society.
It was great to be one of the first organisations to benefit from this. This booklet is now being widely rolled out across GP surgeries.
We are really proud to be an organisation that takes the menopause seriously and in January we signed the ‘Menopause Workplace pledge’ to further demonstrate our commitment.
We are looking forward to everything that is planned for the future, from many more speakers to lots of resources included in our brand new Wellbeing Hub. Watch this space!
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