'You need to be strategic, guided and influenced by where the policy gaps are'

The Royal College of Emergency Medicine has awarded its highest accolade to a psychologist for the first time. Researcher and Clinical Psychologist Dr Jo Daniels (University of Bath) received an honorary fellowship from the college where she had previously worked on research exploring the impact of mental health on NHS staff wellbeing and retention.

Daniels said the award came as a complete surprise and that during her acceptance speech, she felt as if she was truly representing psychology. 'This was a new forum for Psychology and it felt like such a privilege to be able to speak to an auditorium full of medics, and talk about psychology and the benefits of incorporating psychological ways of thinking into practice and policy.

'At the end of my speech, I used that quote "people will forget what you say and forget what you do, but they won't forget how you make them feel"… what I wanted to convey was the importance of peer support, particularly amongst the graduates and newer clinicians.

As we know, and as I found in my own research in emergency medicine, peer support is one of the key protective factors in staff wellbeing. It was a wonderful opportunity to be able to influence the minds of new doctors, reminding them that we all need to feel supported at work, and that talking saves lives.'

'I wrote an article for The Psychologist a while ago about working in mental health and physical health silos, and how my mission is to break down those silos, and this feels like a step in the right direction. I felt honoured that the work my team and I have done is worthy of recognition, but also gratitude for the recognition of psychology and the scope psychology can have outside of our usual roles. That really held meaning for me.'

Daniels is currently working with the Department of Health and Social Care on an ESRC/UKRI policy fellowship, helping to embed evidence and research into policymaking. 'As psychologists, there are many ways we can be useful in policy. We know how to talk about and convey complex information, we know the evidence base and know how to interpret research, but we also know what it is like working on the ground and understanding the grassroots of problems that policies seek to solve. But we need to get involved in policy work more to use these skills and expertise in order to make a meaningful impact. I think the barrier is that many clinicians and researchers in our field don't know how to get involved or where the opportunities are. To help address this, I've started delivering workshops and talks on how to get involved in policy, accumulating resources and advice that I can share with those who are interested in policy and engagement.'

Daniels said her policy fellowship has helped her to build on the work she has already done with other organisations, including the Royal College of Emergency Medicine and the British Psychological Society. She is currently working on mapping out workforce research to identify evidence gaps to inform a new funding call for research in this field. 'I'm helping to shape the future and direction of workforce research, which has been very exciting. I have also been able to build on my pandemic research studies, feeding into the commissioning of future pandemic-related research within DHSC.'

Working within policy, Daniels said, has changed the questions she wants to answer about workforce wellbeing and retention. 'As an academic psychologist, I was being led by practice and gaps I could see in the literature. Now, I see that if you want to make a meaningful, tangible impact with your research, you need to be strategic, guided and influenced by where the policy gaps are, not just the research and evidence gaps. If I want to do meaningful research, I need to look for what is needed, and it is this that will then pave the way to policy and impact. We need to be thinking very early on in our research planning about who the stakeholders are in the research we do, and who the intended consumer is.'