As Sunday 10 October marked World Mental Health Day I wanted to take this opportunity to thank all our colleagues working across our mental health services for all you do to support our service users and their loved ones. I also wanted to use this as another reminder about the importance of looking after your own mental health and wellbeing, as well as supporting your colleagues. Please do take a look at the wellbeing services available to all staff working across NELFT and the north east London patch via Keeping Well NEL.

I will start this week's blog with a thank you to everyone at NELFT for everything they do for our Trust. I was delighted to be able to join our first event of Thank You Fest 21 with The Lowes last week. The music was great and if you didn’t get the chance to join us they recorded a track just for us. There are still plenty of events throughout the month and we have tried to spread them throughout the week and over weekends, at different times, to accommodate as many colleagues as possible. Colleagues can find out more on our intranet.

Well, what better time to start my weekly blog than during our Thank You Fest 21. Thank You Week has really got our NELFT Thank You Fest off to a great start. I have loved seeing all the photos and posts on social media, especially the ones where colleagues have included family members and even pets! Our Thank You Fest is an opportunity for us to thank our colleagues for all they do for NELFT and the wider NHS and through our month of virtual events we hope that colleagues will join with their loved ones in order to have a few moments of fun away from the pressures of working life.

Recently, NELFT Knowledge & Library Service hosted an online Digital Literacy Week programme for student nurses. Content was based on the Royal College of Nursing’s digital skills framework and covered health literacy and how to mitigate misinformation and fake news online. We asked the students to write reflective blogs as part of the week. Here we present the two winners! We hope you enjoy reading their reflections.