HEIW train compassionate nursing and perinatal teams to improve quality of care and staff wellbeing
The Strategic Nursing Workforce Plan for Wales 2025-2030 and the Strategic Perinatal Workforce Plan focus on:
1. Growing the workforce
2. Education and training
3. Leadership and culture
4. Workforce transformation
To implement the actions within the plans we are working with health boards and trusts to deliver several initiatives across NHS Wales.
Our Nursing and Midwifery Workforce Transformation team have designed a two-hour workshop titled “Your high performing compassionate team”. It is a train the trainer approach to strategically support embedding compassionate leadership across our nursing and perinatal workforce in Wales.
This ‘train the trainer’ approach for compassionate leadership ensures wider reach and lasting impact, equipping nursing and perinatal professionals with tools to cultivate compassionate, high-performing teams that improve patient care.
Our Nursing and Midwifery Workforce Transformation team have received outstanding feedback from nurses who have attended the “High Performing Compassionate Team” train the trainer workshops:
What is a high performing compassionate team?
"A group of brilliantly different humans who trust one another, communicate like pro’s (or at least try to), lean into difficulty, consistently get things done, laughing along the way."
Compassionate Leadership
Compassionate leadership requires people to listen, understand, empathise and support others. This enables everyone to feel valued, included and encouraged, so they can reach their full potential and do their best at work. In health and care settings, this can result in:
- an inclusive and positive working environment and culture
- engaged and motivated teams
- improved staff wellbeing
- high-quality care and outcomes for patients.
As the national leadership body for NHS Wales, we champion the Compassionate Leadership Pledge and provide training resources on our Compassionate Leadership Hub.
Workforce retention
Staff retention is a vital part of sustaining and growing our NHS workforce to meet the increasing and changing service demands across Wales. In recent years our staff have been leaving the NHS at an increased rate, due to a variety of staff experience reasons.
All our workforce plans have actions to deliver around staff satisfaction and retention in order to strengthen the future workforce.
Our National Retention Hub focuses on achieving tangible improvements in staff retention across NHS Wales with focus upon the Compassionate Leadership Principles and the commitments of our people pledge:
Our “high performing compassionate team” training aims to:
🔹improve quality of care and patient outcomes
🔹increase staff satisfaction, wellbeing and retention
🔹strengthen leadership capabilities
🔹support the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015 by promoting a healthier, more resilient workforce and "A Healthier Wales”.
For more information on our programmes and priorities please contact: 📧 heiw.nursingworkforceplan@wales.nhs.uk or heiw.perinatalworkforceplan@wales.nhs.uk