A health and social care trust in Northern Ireland has appointed a mental health nurse to its occupational health team for the first time.<\/p>\n
South Eastern Health and Social Care Trust<\/a>, which covers Ards, North Down, Down and Lisburn, said the move \u201cstrengthened its commitment to staff wellbeing\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cMy own lived experience of mental health difficulties has also given me a different perspective\u201d<\/p>\n Harmony Chapman<\/p>\n It added that the new post would provide specialist advice and compassionate support to staff across the trust, while helping colleagues manage mental health<\/a> and wellbeing<\/a> in the workplace.<\/p>\n Harmony Chapman, a mental health nurse with almost 14 years of professional experience across a range of mental health settings, has been appointed to the role.<\/p>\n Ms Chapman said: \u201cI was delighted to be appointed to the role of mental health nurse within the occupational health department of the South Eastern Trust.<\/p>\n \u201cI was impressed that the health service not only recognised the need for mental health support for its staff, but was also willing to invest in its people by appointing a mental health nurse,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Ms Chapman highlighted that her professional experience had given her a \u201cgood understanding of mental illness across various settings and ways to promote wellness and recovery for staff\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cThe role has also given me valuable insight into the daily challenges and pressures staff face which I think is very important in this role,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n She added: \u201cMy own lived experience of mental health difficulties has also given me a different perspective.<\/p>\n \u201cAt times, this has significantly impacted my ability to work and required me to navigate mental health services and occupational health support.<\/p>\n \u201cI have perspective from both sides of the coin as a practitioner and as someone who has required support,\u201d she noted.<\/p>\n \u201cPersonally, this is an exciting opportunity for me to give back to staff who give so much to others in their various roles,\u201d Ms Cooper said.<\/p>\n The trust\u2019s lead nurse for occupational health services, Karen Walker, said: \u201cWe are really excited to be expanding our multidisciplinary team with the addition of Harmony in her role as our first mental health nurse alongside additional physiotherapists.<\/p>\n \u201cThis strengthens our ability to provide early specialist support for both mental health and musculoskeletal health and ensures our staff have access to the right support when they need it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A health and social care trust in Northern Ireland has appointed a mental health nurse to its occupational…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":901298,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[64,63,137,514,515],"class_list":["post-901297","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mental-health","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-health","tag-mental-health","tag-mentalhealth"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/901297","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=901297"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/901297\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/901298"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=901297"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=901297"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=901297"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}