Happiness is unique to every person, your values, your hobbies, your family and your interests. There so many different definitions. I decided that I would focus on what makes me happy at work. It was and wasn’t easy to come up with things, I obviously love my job, team and company however some days it can be very tough, spending your day with the phone glued to your ear and problem solving. I work in social care which is a tough sector, there is always a combination of not enough staff available and too many clients or vice versa, you are constantly juggling with a tough budget to hit.
Despite the sector facing challenges across the UK – I managed to stumble across some lovely statistics on our wonderful NHS and the privilege we have in the UK to be able to use this amazing free health service.
In comparison with the healthcare systems of ten other countries (Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland and USA) the NHS was found to be the most impressive overall by the Commonwealth Fund in 2017.
In April 2017 95.79% of 205,417 in-patients treated by NHS trusts and foundation trusts would recommend their provider to friends or family (25.9% response rate). For 16,017 inpatients treated by independent sector organisations, the proportion was 98.78% (39.0 per cent The proportion of patients seen within 4 hours at A&E departments in 2016/17 was 83.7% in major (type 1 units) and 89.1% overall.
The NHS deals with over 1 million patients every 36 hours.
In the 2016 Care Quality Commission inpatient satisfaction survey 86% of almost 72,000 respondents rated their overall experience as 7 or more out of 10.
After I read the stats this put a huge smile on my face. The fact that we are still doing a great job within the NHS, the fact that our qualified and unqualified staff still care; they care about their patients, they care about their patient’s families and that is a pretty big deal!
Our staff are agency staff and sometimes don’t have the full picture of the service they are going into due to confidentiality and working to a “need to know basis”. However I am very proud to say they do an amazing job, they are frequently requested back time and time again. They are constantly working extremely hard with service users to build a relationship and establish trust in a short space of time.
So, to conclude on International Happiness Day my work makes me happy, the staff I work with inspire me, the clients who work so hard to give their service users exemplary care motivate me and the team I work with who trouble shoot, go above and beyond make me feel blessed.
Work forms a large part of your life, it needs to be something you’re passionate about, something you love and something that motivates you. Choose your job wisely make sure it inspires you, working in this sector is tough but that element of pride that comes from a support worker on our team going the extra mile makes it worthwhile.
As a side note coffee, chocolate and pizza for lunch from the amazing pizzeria down the road also make me happy, my family, wine and a hot bubble bath and the end of the day also rate highly on the happiness scale.
For more information about International Happiness Day visit this link
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