Mental health app launched for nursing profession

Senior nursing figures have backed the ShinyMind app, describing it as a collaboration “with nurses at all levels, for nurses at all levels”.

The nurse-focused version of ShinyMind was gifted, free of charge, by the technology company to all nurses, midwives, nursing associates and healthcare support workers across England.

“ShinyMind has so many different kinds of resources within it"

Gemma Stacey

ShinyMind is an evidenced-based app that contains resources, tools and exercises to help support nurses’ wellbeing. It is the only app co-created, developed and tested in partnership with staff from all levels in the NHS.

Founder of the app and psychotherapist, Rebecca Howard, said: “ShinyMind aims to help nurses better cope with the challenges they face on a daily basis.

"It also provides resources for professional needs such as masterclasses on assertiveness and voice plus [continuing professional development] and reflective supervision.”

NHS England and NHS Improvement seconded nursing retention and liaison lead, Karen Storey, to support the development of the ShinyMind and to help engage nurses in co-designing the nursing version of the app.

“The nursing version of ShinyMind has been designed in collaboration with nurses at all levels, for nurses at all levels,” Ms Storey said.

Several senior nursing figures have backed the launch of the app.

Professor Gemma Stacey, deputy chief executive officer and director of policy unit at the Florence Nightingale Foundation, told Nursing Times that it is “really important for nurses to attend to their own emotional needs” so they are in a position to offer that to patients.

Gemma Stacey

Professor Stacey, who has more than 20 years’ experience as a mental health nurse and helped to develop the restorative clinical supervision aspect of ShinyMind, also said she is a “strong advocate” of psychotherapy being an available tool for nurses.

“ShinyMind has so many different kinds of resources within it. It's like an education tool as well as something that you can use practically on a day to day and to support wellbeing,” Professor Stacey said.

New, independent research which polled 400 nurses using ShinyMind, found that 46% felt it had improved their productivity. Meanwhile 94% “felt better” as a result of using the app.

Also supporting the app is Professor Steve Hams, chief nurse at North Bristol NHS Trust.

He told Nursing Times that during a period of struggling with anxiety and depression, ShinyMind helped him in his recovery.

During and after the coronavirus pandemic, the demands on leaders to show up for their teams led his mental health to worsen, he said.

“I wasn’t feeling right, low mood and being anxious in meetings and that sort of stuff,” he said.

Steve Hams

“So I reached out to the doctor as the starting point, then saw opportunities to try and find other ways of kind of managing my wellbeing, which is where the ShinyMind app appeared from.”

Professor Hams said tools like ShinyMind are essential for the nursing workforce, describing burnout as “endemic” in the profession.

This launch comes amid reports that more than 40,000 nurses have left the NHS in the past year largely due to stress.

Professor Hams, who was on the nursing advisory board for ShinyMind, described how since using the app he has “a full kit of things” he can “pull out and lean on”.

Marsha Jones, deputy chief nurse at Epsom and St Helier Hospitals NHS Trust, echoed this, describing the app as “impressive”.

Marsha Jones

As a frequent user of the ShinyMind and an advocate for Black, Asian and minority ethnic staff wellbeing, Ms Jones told Nursing Times that the app could help to remove some of the stigma surrounding mental health within minority ethnic communities.

Ms Jones, who is the founding member of the Caribbean Nurses and Midwives Association, said she knows “first-hand” the challenges that minority ethnic staff face.

“They’re exhausted, they get some of the most awful shifts to work or some have the hardest tasks to complete. Sometimes people don't get a break. They're juggling family life, they're exhausted,” she said.

“And that is often sometimes not comparable with the experiences of their White counterparts.

“So that’s where that bit of it comes out, where it is so important that we manage the stigma within mental health, especially for cohorts or communities who don't normally feel comfortable to talk about these things.”

To mark the launch of ShinyMind, a virtual event took place today across NHS foundation trusts in England.

Also present was poet and author, Michael Rosen, who recited a specially commissioned poem for the profession he credits with saving his life when he contracted Covid-19.

While the app is only currently available to nurses working in England, the developers of ShinyMind have said that they are working with NHS Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland to roll-out to the nursing workforce in the future.