Blog
Changing the narrative on suicide and revisioning nurse regulation
In September last year, on World Suicide Prevention Day 2025, colleagues on the team wrote a powerful blog piece called Revisioning the Narrative.
World Suicide Prevention Day this year continues the theme of changing the narrative on suicide, which is so aligned with our work.
More Than a Story
Since my father died by suicide, I have drawn on my lived and living experience, including my own suicidality, suicide bereavement and supporting people I love, to influence service improvements and help professionals understand how people can be better supported.
I undertook a Churchill Fellowship to explore how we could gather people’s lived experience better.
Taking a closer look at Nursing
As the next stage of our research commences, we turn our attention to exploring nurses’ experiences of stress, distress and suicidality. Whilst all elements of our study are interested in women nurses’ psychological wellbeing and health, we are taking a closer, in some senses ‘deeper’, look at the everyday experiences of individual nurses.
Why take a gendered approach to understanding violence and abuse?
This year, Tuesday 25th November was White Ribbon Day: a day that seeks to raise awareness of the global epidemic of violence against women and girls. White Ribbon Day is also the start of a sixteen-day period of campaigning and awareness raising about violence against women and girls, sometimes referred to as the 16 Days of Action. This year the campaign will end on Wednesday 10th December.
Revisioning the narrative
The theme for this years World Suicide Prevention Day is Changing the Narrative on Suicide. It is a theme that aligns well with the focus of our research on suicide in women nurses. We use the word ‘revisioning’ in the title of our Wellcome Trust funded study to describe our groundbreaking and transformative approach.
Celebrating and Supporting Internationally Qualified Nurses
For this NHS Overseas Workers Day, we focus on Internationally Qualified Nurses working in the NHS; their contributions, challenges and how our work is addressing this.
Your views matter
We want to hear different viewpoints on why there are higher rates of suicide in women nurses.
Why ‘only’ women nurses?
We have been asked why our research focuses solely on women nurses.
We have given a great deal of consideration to the design of the studies within this project, including consulting with nurses and our project stakeholders. We made the decision to focus specifically on women nurses for a range of reasons and in this blog I will focus on three of these.
Supporting bereaved healthcare workers.
My name is Jules Lewis and I am a Swan End of Life Care Lead Nurse at The Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust and PhD Student at Staffordshire University. I am also bereaved by suicide, my beautiful best friend Janet took her own life in February 2019 aged 47, a caring and compassionate friend and nurse for over 20 years. I set up, with the support from our lead volunteer & our administrator, a staff bereavement support service at the hospital where I work.
On the death of a colleague.
Working with individuals who experience suicidal ideation or intent is an integral aspect of mental health, and it is probable that all registered nurses working in this field will come across a person in this situation at some point, irrespective of the specific area in which they develop their career. As an RMN working in a crisis resolution team, this was a common concern. I took professional pride in my ability to assess risk and provide something of use to that person based on their need at that precise moment. And then I had a colleague and friend end her life.