Safe staffing

Our staff are committed to providing high quality, safe and compassionate care for all our patients. To deliver this, we need to have the best trained staff in place with the right skills in the right place at the right time.

Our staffing levels are reviewed for all our wards every day to ensure they are safe for both the day and night shifts. These figures are displayed at the entrance to each ward so that our patients and visitors can see the planned and actual staffing levels. If you want to talk to anyone about staffing or you have any questions, the ward sister or matron will be happy to help.

All hospitals are now required to publish information about the number of nursing and midwifery staff working on each shift on each ward, together with the percentage of shifts meeting safe staffing guidelines. You’ll also find this information on this website (below), together with more detailed daily information about our staffing levels, including a breakdown by ward.

Our safe staffing levels are reported to our Trust Board monthly and published on NHS Choices. The routine Trust Board programme is however slightly different for the month of August as no Trust Board is scheduled to take place. During this period, the staffing reports for June and July will be reviewed by the executive team at the executive committees and then by the Trust Board in September.

In our monthly reports we aim to explain where the changes in staffing were, when these occurred and what actions were taken to ensure the gaps did not impact on the quality of patient care. All day and night shifts are professionally judged for safety by the nurse in charge of each shift who considers a range of issues including staffing levels. Our ratings can be found on our daily safe staffing levels by ward for each month and the link can be found below.

This new way of reporting is just one of the many ways that we – and the wider NHS – are responding to a number of recent reports about safety in the NHS, including the Francis Report into the failings at Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust. All of these reports called for greater openness and transparency in the NHS, which we fully support.

Other ‘safety’ data is available via the NHS Choices website. This includes information about:

• Infection and cleanliness, including the number of cases of MRSA (bacteraemia) and C.difficile we’ve had over the previous three months
• How open and honest we are considered to be, for instance in reporting patient safety incidents
• Whether our staff would recommend our hospitals if a friend or relative needed treatment
• The number of pressure ulcers reported
• How good we are at responding to patient safety alerts
• The number of adult inpatients who were assessed for the risk of having a blood clot
• The number of times patients have been harmed as a result of a fall
• View NHS England's Chief Nursing Officer’s letter and FAQs (frequently asked questions) about safe staffing