The importance of staff wellbeing & engagement on patient outcomes and safety by Clinical Lead Nursing, Martine Price

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If you could do one thing to enhance the quality of patient or staff experience at work – what would it be?

Our staff are central to improving the quality and delivery of safe care. How they experience the culture of the organisation and how they feel about being in the workplace directly impacts on their ability to care for patients, their team, themselves and their families.

Following what our staff have experienced during the pandemic, our ability to really listen to them is more important than ever before.

Our webinar “Listening to the needs of patients and staff” on the 27 July shared the Northumbria Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust work and how Annie Laverty, Chief Experience Officer is leading on a pioneering real-time staff experience programme. It was inspiring to hear Annie share Northumbria’s evidence based approach and particularly the lessons learnt in the context of supporting staff well-being and engagement during COVID19 and share how that is shaping service recovery, patient safety and experience outcomes.

Real time feedback, collected at scale, using data for improvement and impressive outcomes on staff engagement scores, surely such work is core business for any organisation?

I have led patient experience work over many years and we know that often it is the small things that really matter and make the most difference, listening to Annie I was struck by the way feedback is responded to in real time, the range of interventions taken, many of them really simple but effective and how what staff have said is consistently fed back, so the loop is closed.  

Take a few moments to listen to the recording as Annie says staff experience really matters, their outcomes are impressive. In 2019 they were tied first nationally as the best place to work in the NHS.  

For Northumbria this has been a journey over many years and we have a follow on webinar planned for the Autumn sharing that journey with a focus on patient experience. Follow us on social media for the date.