Advice on speaking with work please
Hi,
I work in a patient facing job in the health service and I’m planning to work until 40 weeks (regretting this massively). Fo context my work is pretty target driven (5 or 6 sessions of one hour plus team meeting) and I see patients blocks of sessions.
I feel like my manager is supportive in saying the right things but in reality is not actually very supportive eg. I got assigned a full new caseload of patients at 32 weeks even though I had mentioned this would be tight (I see people for 8 to 10 sessions) if either of us were to be ill or if they were unavailable one week etc. This happened anyway and now I feel under so much pressure to not be sick and get their treatment done. They said I should just do double sessions if needed at the end.
I don’t have any proper medical issues in my pregnancy which I’m grateful for, but I am 36 weeks and really struggling. Getting about 4 hours sleep per night, migraines and have nausea. I definitely do not feel like I’m slacking at work, I’m still going in and working as hard as I can but feel absolutely drained at the end of the day. I had a couple of patients now be referred for other treatment so finished early. I feel so pressured because right away I have my manager saying she is seeing spaces in my caseload and to put up one off assessments to make sure I’m on full target.
Anyone else had experience of this? What would you do? Feel so stressed about how I’m going to continue but stuck because I feel like I need to keep going as I would hate to let patients down and have to transfer (psychological trauma work)😔
Sorry for the rant, if anyone has any words of wisdom it would be much appreciated
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Have your workplace done your pregnancy risk assessment? If you're NHS I'm sure there's a section about workplace stress which I think this would fall under. I'm in a patient facing role but do mostly telephone clinics and I have a slightly reduced case load to allow for movement breaks so that I'm not sat for long periods of time which flares my PGP. Like you I was planning to work until my due date but have now moved this to 38 weeks as I'm just getting too tired
I ditto Katie’s advice. Ask if you can have a pregnancy risk assessment or ask to speak with occupational health. I’m another one that’s decided to work till my due date, also at 36 weeks at the moment. I’m going through the same symptoms as you, nausea, migraines, tiredness. And the added stress of patient work and targets really won’t be helping you.
I work as a self employed counsellor, so I understand the pressures of not missing any sessions due to illness’s or clients cancelling for other reasons
I’m also NHS in a patient facing role. I’m not nursing staff but I work on my feet on the wards (covering multiple wards a day).
I started my maternity leave at 36wks but found my management to be the same (not so much giving extra work, but not thinking about reducing my work - despite me having all 3 risk assessments this pregnancy)
I felt like I really had to stand my ground and speak up about it.
I made sure all my concerns went into emails and ended up meeting with HR as it got a bit ridiculous some of the ways they were managing me. - still not had feedback from this yet either 🙄
Like you say, they always say the right things like “your wellbeing is of the utmost importance” but they never really showed it.
(I did end up reducing my work but that was because my team members insisted on picking up my afternoon jobs so I could stay in my department and rest, not because management were looking out for me)
I would definitely write an email at least ❤️
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