Shropshire hospital survey reveals safety culture concerns
A survey of staff at Shropshire's major hospitals has revealed serious concerns from workers over the "safety culture" at the organisations.
The 2018 NHS Staff Survey results also show that workers at Shrewsbury & Telford Hospitals NHS Trust, which manages Princess Royal Hospital Telford, and Royal Shrewsbury Hospital, have raised concerns about bullying.
The survey includes stark figures in relation to the amount of respondents who "often think about leaving", with 37.4 per cent confirming they consider an exit from the trust.
A total of 2,580 members of staff completed the survey – a response rate of just 45 per cent.
It found that the percentage of respondents who said they have experienced harassment, bullying, or abuse from a colleague had increased from 18.9 per cent to 19.4 per cent.
The survey results also show that only 60.6 per cent of respondents "would feel secure raising concerns about unsafe clinical practice" – the lowest figure across the country.
Only 52.6 per cent of respondents said that "if a friend or relative needed treatment I would be happy with the standard of care provided".
Responding to the findings Victoria Rankin, workforce director at The Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust (SaTH) said they were addressing the findings as a "priority".
She also stressed that the outcome is not about providing better scores, but a better working environment.
She said: “I would like to thank all of our staff who took the time to complete the NHS Staff Survey – their feedback is important, as it supports us to better understand how it feels to work at the trust.
“These results are clearly not what we would aspire to achieve and are something that we need to address as a priority.
“Even before the full results were known to us, we began holding focus groups with colleagues to better understand their concerns and what they feel needs to be done to address them. These have been very useful and we will continue them throughout the year to ensure we are constantly receiving feedback from our staff to keep us on the right track.
“As a result of feedback, lots of work has already been developed to improve staff experience, including increasing the hours of our Freedom to Speak Up Guardians for staff to report concerns; introduction of the ‘Cascade’ staff briefings to better ensure staff are aware of key developments; and mental health first aid training.
“We, of course, want our performance to be better this year, but this is not about improving our scores, it is about what improving those scores means – a better working environment for our staff, leading to better outcomes for our patients.”
