Menopause Warriors

Experiencing peri-menopause? menopause?  not sure?  need support at work?

Gateshead Health’s dedicated menopause support group, Menopause Warriors, offer colleagues a safe and understanding space to discuss menopause and peri-menopause, and the impact that they can have.

Our Menopause Warriors meet on a monthly basis – at different dates and times to encourage participation from all areas, and all are welcome to attend a meeting, have a cuppa, relax and enjoy a chat with others who are experiencing similar symptoms and experiences in an understanding environment. To find out when the next meeting is, keep an eye on our news section or drop us a line.

The Menopause Warriors also have a dedicated WhatsApp group chat. To access the group chat, please get in touch with the health and wellbeing team.

Finally, amongst our Menopause Warriors are Menopause Buddies. Buddies provide you with someone you can get in touch with at any time to chat about the challenges you’re facing. To arrange to be paired up with a buddy, just send us an email.

Henpicked

Gateshead Health are currently partnered with award-winning experts Henpicked, who are helping us to not only improve our support offering in the area of menopause and peri-menopause but also become a menopause-accredited employer.

Henpicked work with us to deliver a range of education and awareness events aimed at both managers and colleagues. Sessions are designed for all – so whether you’re suffering from symptoms, know someone who is or want to increase your knowledge, everyone will learn something.

Due to the terms of our partnership, we can not publicly host Henpicked’s vast support content. To access their sessions, please instead visit the Menopause Support page of StaffZone via the button below. Here you’ll find everything from their ‘Menopause in Minutes’ video to webinars on topics such as the impact of menopause on bone health, fatigue, handling menopause, hot flushes, periods, mental health, fertility, weight gain, stress, brain fog, sleep and much more! There are also books, podcasts, apps and more!

If you do not have access to a Trust device, please get in touch with us and we can arrange private access directly.

Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT)

An unlimited quantity of eligible HRT medicines can now be accessed through a 12-month Prescription Prepayment Certificate, reducing the cost of accessing this support to under £20 per year and meaning you can make savings if you purchase more than 2 prescriptions per year.

Around three quarters of women experience symptoms of menopause, with 1 in 4 experiencing servere symptoms which have a serious impact on their quality of life. As menopausal symptoms are caused by oestrogen fluctations, symptoms can also affect other genders.

Those who access HRT medicines which are not eligible may still be able to save through standard Prescription Prepayment Certificates.

To help spread the word about this offer amongst colleagues, you could always download our HRT poster and display it in your working area.

Recording menopause absence on Health Roster

As part of our efforts to become a more menopause-conscious and supportive organisation, we recently worked alongside our fantastic Health Roster team to introduce a number of new reasons for absence related to menopause.

By doing this, we can ensure that we can record and subsequently highlight the impact menopause has on our colleagues and organisation, and hopefully help build further business cases to expand and further develop our support for colleagues who experience symptoms.

We’re now asking managers who record absence in Health Roster to record any menopause-related absence accordingly. To do this, you’ll need to select the secondary reason as ‘Menopause’ – which will be available when you click any of the following primary absence reasons:

• Back problems
• Genito/Gy – Genitourinary & gynaecological disorders
• Head-Migra – Headache/Migraine
• M-Skeletal – Other musculoskeletal problems
• Skin Dis – Skin disorders
• Stress – Anxiety/Stress/Depression/other psychiatric
• Sub-Ab – Substance abuse

eLearning: Menopause Awareness

Those seeking to learn more about menopause can complete NHS England’s free 30-minute eLearning session.

During the session, you’ll be provided with an overview of what the menopause is and some of the more common symptoms associated with it. You’ll also be presented with some scenarios to aid your understanding of the ways in which people can better support themselves and each other.

The eLearning session is designed for all colleagues, meaning it is of use whether you’re experiencing symptoms, may do one day, or are seeking more information on how you can support a colleague, friend, relative or otherwise.