Safe Staffing

High-Quality, Safe and Compassionate Care

The Trust is committed to ensuring safe, high quality care. Concerns over nurse staffing arrangements have come out of a number of high profile national inquiries and reviews which have been played out in the professional and national media over recent years.  Trusts are now expected to take more robust action in ensuring safer staffing in all of our inpatient areas.

Since May 2014 all hospitals are required to publish information about the planned and actual number of nursing and midwifery staff working on each inpatient ward. The intention is to demonstrate how Trusts across the NHS ensure the safety of their staffing levels and skill mix. This information is displayed in 3 ways:

• The total number of hours for the month for Registered Nurses and Care Staff.
• The percentage of cover in the day and at night by Registered Nurses and Care Staff.
• Care Hours Per Patient Day (CHPPD) displays the average amount of direct patient care a patient receives in a 24 hour period from Registered Nurse and Care staff.

We are committed to providing high-quality, safe and compassionate care on all our wards. To help us achieve this aim we need to make sure that we have the right staff, with the right skills, in the right place, at the right time. This area of our website explains what we're doing to make sure our staffing levels are safe.

How do we check staffing levels?

Every six months (April and October) we review the number of nurses, midwifes and other care staff (such as health care assistants and ward practitioners) we have working on each of our wards.  We decide if any action needs to be taken to improve the people resources we have, how we use them and how they can deliver services to our patients in the most effective way.

When was our last review?

The Board paper and full details of our current and past reviews can be downloaded here:

How does our hospital compare?

You can see facts and figures for nurses, midwives and care staff at other hospitals on the MyNHS website.

Do we publish staffing rates for individual wards at our hospital?

Yes. As well as submitting figures to NHS Improvement which is published on the NHS Choices and MyNHS websites every month, we also publish 'Care Hours per Patent Day (CHPPD)' for each ward in the hospital. The Board of Directors receive a detailed paper to assure itself that everything is being done to achieve the right skill mix across all wards.

Information on ward boards

As well as publishing the information highlighted above, we demonstrate safe staffing throughout the day. On each of our wards you will find information about each ward's shift and who is on duty. If you want to talk to anyone about staffing, or you have any questions, the ward matron will be happy to help.

We hope that you find this information useful, together with information on MyNHS, but we welcome feedback and questions which should be directed either to the relevant Head of Nursing or through our PALS service.