The Wellbeing Shelf: a web resource to support nursing and midwifery students’ wellbeing and resilience during practice placement

Coping with the challenges of a busy and diverse workplace environment is increasingly recognised as a source of stress for nursing and midwifery students (Stacey et al, 2019; Amsrud et al, 2019) and it is recognised that the demanding nature of the occupation leads to higher levels of depression and anxiety amongst the workforce (Masharaj et al 2019).
The Wellbeing Shelf is a co-designed resource developed by a team of nursing and midwifery students, academic teaching staff and ‘wellbeing champions’ who are students who specifically develop student wellbeing activities. This educational resource empowers students to develop wellbeing strategies that are known to promote resilience, thus enabling students to excel in their learning. Within the codesign process, students identified they wanted an asynchronous approach to learning, allowing them to access a resource that promoted wellbeing at times that suited their lifestyle and when they felt they needed additional support, such as during clinical placement. The Wellbeing Shelf was co-designed to provide students with understanding of resilience and wellbeing, brief online interventions and longer practices and podcasts which they can access to support their wellbeing.
The teaching team evaluated the Wellbeing Shelf with a total available sample of 353 first year nursing and midwifery students. All students were required to use the resource and provide a brief evaluation of the resource as an asynchronous learning activity with students consenting to be involved in the research project. Analysis of qualitative data revealed three themes: acquiring knowledge about wellbeing; actioning learning by translating learning from the resource into action and advocating by promoting self-care practices amongst friends and family. A further longitudinal study is now underway to explore the journey of wellbeing and resilience development with a cohort of nursing and midwifery students for 3 years.