It’s a demanding job, bringing emergency care to people as and where they need it, so the team at CareFlight have to be ready for any incident at any time.
The experiences they endure can often be traumatic, though this is something not all CareFlight staff have been trained to deal with earlier in their careers.
“While the doctors and nurses flying out to these situations are used to seeing trauma of all sorts, often those flying the planes or driving the ambulances are not,” explains Aeromedical Specialist Caroline Macari.
“Staff are being asked to put themselves in the position of seeing what can sometimes be distressing scenes time and time again. We as an organisation wanted to make sure that everyone at CareFlight felt supported, and wanted to ensure we were looking after their mental health. Even those not on the front line deserve to feel supported and know that their organisation cares.”
This resulted in creation of a Wellbeing team who, along with many other initiatives, accessed mental health training with the Black Dog Institute, and proudly funded by the NSW Government. So far 30 managers have completed ‘Managing for Team Wellbeing’, and they aim to register every other manager for workshops later in the year.
Now she is working to equip the rest of the team with the skills to look after their health and support others, with another 20 staff just having completed ‘Your Mental Health at Work’ training.
“It’s important that every staff member knows we care for their mental wellbeing and they have training to start the conversation of asking their teammates – are you coping? I hope other organisations sign up too.”
