Sherwood Forest Hospitals is one of the happiest hospital Trusts in England

Sherwood Forest Hospitals has again been rated by staff as having one of the happiest teams in England, according to findings of the latest national NHS staff survey.

The annual NHS Staff Survey for 2018 confirms Sherwood Forest Hospitals:

• Has the best overall engagement score in the East Midlands for acute (hospital) Trusts and 11th best in England (3.91 out of 5). (This is the first time the Trust has been rated the highest in the East Midlands in the national staff survey).
• Is the top acute Trust in the East Midlands and joint 8th best acute Trust in England (out of 89 acute Trusts nationally) as a place to work and receive treatment.
• Is the top acute Trust in the East Midlands and joint 6th best acute Trust in England for staff satisfied with their quality of work and care they provide.

For the third consecutive year the volume of staff who would recommend Sherwood Forest Hospitals as a place to work and as a place to receive care has improved. These results are based on a 62% response rate from all staff, which is the second highest in the East Midlands and 6th highest in England for acute NHS Trusts.

The Trust, which runs King’s Mill Hospital, Newark Hospital and Mansfield Community Hospital takes part in the annual National NHS Survey each year and all staff were invited to share their views, with an impressive 2,789 (62%) staff choosing to take part.

Sherwood Forest Hospitals’ Chief Executive, Richard Mitchell, said: “I am pleased and proud that, once again, colleagues feel Sherwood is a great place to work and receive treatment and these findings have confirmed we have some of the most engaged staff across the NHS. We know an engaged workforce is directly linked to improved patient care so this is a really important aspect of the survey.

“Our overall score has again improved over the last 12 months and this is testament to the hard work of colleagues, especially at a time when all NHS staff are under a lot of pressure. We have worked over the last year to make improvements at Sherwood and build on our good feedback from the 2017 survey around staff engagement.”

“These impressive results round-off a positive 2018 for Sherwood, as our overall CQC rating improved to ‘Good’ and ‘Outstanding’ for care. We want the care for all patients to be as good as if they were a member of our family receiving it. I believe the best way to deliver high quality of care is through a happy and engaged team and the results show we have made further progress in the last 12 months.

“Although these findings are promising, I am not content with standing still and I know there are colleagues who do not enjoy their experience at Sherwood. I would like every colleague to be happy with every aspect of their work and I know we have a long way to go to achieve this. This year we will be concentrating on the health and wellbeing of colleagues to help them feel better supported with issues inside and outside of work.”

Other areas that saw a significant improvement in comparison to the 2017 survey include colleagues feeling motivated at work, colleagues feeling valued by managers and the organisation, and colleagues reporting good communication between senior management and colleagues.

The positive results of the survey come just a month after data from the Quality Care Commission’s national survey of maternity experience showed King’s Mill Hospital to be one of the best in the area to have a baby.

The results are primarily intended for use by NHS organisations to help them review and improve staff experience. The Care Quality Commission use the results from the survey to monitor ongoing compliance with essential standards of quality and safety.