News, Occupational Health | Caroline Kalu | 23 September 2026

Occupational health awareness week: the importance of accessing services early

If you have an issue with your health and wellbeing, you may not automatically think of accessing the trust’s occupational health services. But it is this team of doctors, nurses, psychologists, physiotherapists, technicians, occupational therapists, and support staff that are experts in keeping you well at work and providing a healthy workplace.

This year’s Occupational Health Awareness Week run by The Society of Occupational Medicine focuses on encouraging colleagues to seek support early from occupational health if you are experiencing health issues, both long and short-term. This can be support for physical and mental wellbeing or helping to prevent injuries and illness that may arise from work activities.

Here, members of the occupational health team talk about how their roles support staff and the importance of occupational health in promoting a positive workplace culture.

Hasmita Patel, deputy service manager occupational health

Hasmita’s role is to lead a team 10 administrators across all North London Partners Shared Services (NLPSS) occupational health sites, ensuring the smooth running of the department, organising clinics, appointments and answering queries about referrals. She is also a qualified occupational health technician — someone who conducts routine tests, health surveillance and fitness screenings — and has previously worked in occupational health in various NHS trusts and at private companies.

“This year, I will have worked in occupational health for 21 years and I actually just fell into the profession. I had studied civil education law, but I found it boring and thought that I needed to do something different. It was when I helped a friend at Cancer Research UK in occupational health because they needed some cover that I feel in love with this profession.

“I love being able to help people with their health at work, answering their questions, providing answers and making colleagues feel comfortable with seeking that support. It is great if they then use the information we give them to go on and implement positive changes in their own teams as well. To keep people in work and be able to provide support at the same time, it’s quite rewarding.

“We get a lot of situations where managers and employees don’t see eye to eye, and they’ve got very stressed and upset. In these circumstances we talk to them, advise them what options they have and get them to step back from the situation. We also get staff who have had scalpel or needlestick injuries, which are delicate situations, but we are able to get them to see a nurse as soon as possible, get their bloods done, and reassure them that we’re here to support them.

“We spend most of our time at work and you’ve got to be safe and happy and protected when you’re at work. It’s sad, but we probably see our work colleagues more than we see our family sometimes. So being able to create a safe and supportive environment, I think, is very important. And that’s the nature of our job.

“I think a lot of our staff don’t know they have occupational health support. We’ve got psychology, physio, counselling services, there’s so much available. I think as soon as you realise you’ve got something, any kind of issue, address it, ask the question, and it’ll be prevented to get to another stage. And your occupational health team is there to help.”

Aleksandra Paksina, clinical psychologist

Aleksandra and her colleagues support staff who are feeling overwhelmed, anxious, overstretched or struggling in their roles. This can be on an individual or group basis, such as reflective practice or skills-based workshops, depending on your needs. Support is always confidential and you can self refer to the service. Group sessions are organised at the request of managers.

“We accept referrals for psychological issues that are work related. It can be anything from stress, anxiety, low mood and trauma to phobias that might interfere with something that somebody needs to do. If the stressor occurred outside work, we tend to signpost to community services because there is excellent provision for that outside of the trust.

“For group sessions, we normally meet up with the manager or team lead to understand whether the staff need a little bit more of a reflective space. So that tends to happen when there has been a difficult incident or interpersonal issues within the team. For example, we held sessions for a team that has a lot of exposure to traumatic incidents where we focused on coping with trauma and making sure it doesn’t develop into post-traumatic stress disorder.

“We’re very much focused on coping strategies and techniques. We use evidence-based treatments, but the idea is that there should be some kind of change where we set a goal and we’ll work on achieving this.

“Some staff need more space to talk, in which case we then signpost to counselling. Counselling differs to psychology as it’s more about exploration and traditional talking therapy. Whereas psychology is more about what are the coping strategies we can work on? Can we help you to react differently or think differently and therefore feel differently about situations?

“I think for a lot of people working in healthcare, it’s very normal to think about everyone else but themselves. And unfortunately, the levels of burnout are very high. Occupational health works to prevent this by giving you support before things become too difficult. In traumatic situations, if we’re able to speak to colleagues early, we can use psychoeducation to explain a little bit about what the brain is doing and how we can help the brain to cope. The human brain is incredible, and it can do a lot of its things on its own if you give it the right kind of circumstances. And this is where I find my job particularly rewarding because you can intervene early by making sure somebody doesn’t develop unhelpful strategies that will affect them in the long run.

“I really love helping the helper. We see staff that really, really want to look after people and do their best, whether they are in a clinical or non-clinical role. A lot of people work in the NHS because they want to help, but there are barriers to them doing that. If you can make them feel better and cope better at work, then there’s a kind of knock-on effect on the people that they will be helping or looking after.”