Join us for a Storytelling day retreat for doctors
Join retreat faculty member Dr Lalith Wijedoru, from Behind Your Mask, and Dr Jo Hacking, About Wellbeing Ltd Founder, as they lead this Storytelling day on the topic of doctor suicide.
One of the rationales for this wellbeing day retreat is to capture the experiences, through stories, of doctors working in the NHS to understand what pressures they face. Stories shared will be anonymised.
The day with include four specialty-specific storytelling sessions for doctors from the clinical specialties with the highest risk of suicide: anaesthetics/ITU; primary care; psychiatry; and surgery. Each session will only have doctors from the same specialty.
There will also be a final storytelling session with everyone present – with the theme of “Hope, action and future” during which time we aim to invite a final conversation and bring together the themes from the day.
Meet your retreat host
Jo Hacking
Retreat organiser. Founder & Director of About Wellbeing Ltd
Dr Jo Hacking is a certified Transformational Coach and runs her own coaching and wellbeing training business “About Wellbeing Ltd”. She also works as a Mental Health and Wellbeing advocate, retreat organiser, and Wellbeing Project Officer for the WIltshire Wildlife Trust.
Jo has a medical background of over 25 years as a doctor, with 10 years as an NHS Consultant in Paediatric Emergency Medicine. She experienced a burnout and mental illness journey some years ago and learnt the power of accepting help, honest self-awareness and compassionate self-care. Her lived experiences – with the benefits of going through psychotherapy (provided through Practitionner Health) and coaching – inform her current work, but it is the importance of Nature – and the human experience of being a part of nature – which provides the dominant theme underpinning Jo’s value set.
She is an advocate of creating cultural change and increasing opportunities to support the benefits of nature connection for wellbeing. This has now become a full time occupation, such that she finally stepped away from clinical medicine in 2023.
She lives in Wiltshire with her husband, three children and various other animals.
Lalith Wijedoru
Story sharing guide & retreat facilitator
Lalith has enjoyed a career in paediatrics and paediatric emergency medicine, as an educator, researcher, and a clinician in low-resource settings across Asia.
He is a storyteller and facilitator, health and wellbeing advocate and massage therapist and – among many other talents founder of Behind Your Mask
The details
What’s included
One-day retreat including lunch at Sheepdrove Organic Farm & Ecovenue:
- Delicious professional catering
- Facilitated workshops & activities
- Small group (max 20 guests)
Dates & times
Date: Thursday 5 March 2026
Time: 09.00 am – 17.00 pm
Your investment
£60 (day retreat without accommodation)
Accommodation is available in Woodend on Wednesday 4 March for a limited number of guests – please enquire when you book your place.
About Wellbeing Retreats are suitable for CPD purposes
Retreats offer an immersive learning opportunity and safe environment for Doctors to:
- explore and address their individual well-being needs
- learn skills and strategies to apply in their onward personal and professional journey.
Each retreat will be delivered to a small group of doctors with a tailored range of coaching, workshops and wellbeing activities.
This retreat can be considered a business expense (for personal development) providing 16 hours of approved CPD training.
This CPD provision does not detract from the experience being a retreat in the traditional sense of the word!
