Publish date: 10 May 2023
Hello, my name is Katharine Jepson. I am 55 years old and have been working for Northumbria Healthcare for over 27 years. I work in administration and I'm based at Hexham General Hospital, but I also travel to others sites in my role.
My symptoms of the menopause began about 4 years ago, which wasn’t the best time with COVID happening too. I suffered with hot flushes, night sweats and had trouble sleeping too - and then weight appeared on me from nowhere! Like many people I was home working which made me feel anxious and isolated too.
I was so pleased to know when I was suffering that there was a Menopause Staff Network set up to support staff and I am now really happy to give some of my time to help develop the network further.
The network is a great forum to find out about help available and it’s great the trust has signed the Workplace Menopause Pledge. For me this basically means that;
- The trust recognises the importance of supporting women going through the menopause at work.
- We are encouraged to talk openly, positively and respectfully about menopause.
- The trust supports and informs employees affected by the menopause.
My other source of help and support are my friends who are the same age as me (I know them from school and university days), and we all get together to chat and share experiences. Exercise also really helps me with the menopause. I’ve found that my symptoms are lessened with the help of playing netball with a group of women of all ages, fitness classes and pilates. I’ve really noticed the benefit of keeping your body and mind healthy, especially your bone health during the menopause years!
Our Menopause Staff Network have worked with staff across the trust to identify key areas for our trust to focus on to improve support. These include:
- Thinner staff uniforms/scrubs. We now make these via our factory at Seaton Delaval Factory to help women suffering hot flushes.
- Increasing access to water coolers at our sites – helping staff to make time for water breaks in the warmer weather especially.
- Delivering successful sleep workshops to help staff suffering from insomnia.
- Acupuncture workshops led by one of our physios to relieve hot flushes and night sweats.
- We’re working with HR to develop a Menopause Workplace Policy, to raise awareness and offer specialist support to staff and mangers. This will be shared with staff soon once its ratified.
I feel overall menopause is so important to be aware of in home and work life and it is very important to offer support. Currently 63% of women at work are of Menopause age; all women will experience this in some way and to have knowledge and support systems for staff is vital to help retain our highly trained workforce. Often women at this age will lose confidence at work and will take early retirement, go part-time/reduce hours, or just feel that they can’t do their job like they used to.
Going forward, our Menopause Staff Network has lots of exciting plans including linking in with Staff Wellbeing to promote specialist exercise classes to promote living well with menopause. This will initially be for our network group, which is the largest one in the Trust with over 370 members. It is hoped these classes will enable women in our trust experiencing similar symptoms to come together so that our female staff do not feel out of place taking part and can do these at main sites nearby.
We actively want to encourage more women to talk freely and off load problems/share experiences by setting up “Coffee & Chat” hubs on as many trust sites as we can. We will be asking like-minded women from each of our main sites to help set these up to reduce travel time and improve access to support from network meetings.
So... there are lots of exciting things on the horizon and it’s great to be part of it as a co-chair. Watch this space!