Lincolnshire community trusts improve in NHS National Staff Survey

The results of a national survey show most NHS staff working in community, mental health and learning disability services in Lincolnshire feel supported by their managers and would recommend their organisations as a place to work and receive treatment.

Response rates to the NHS National Staff Survey at both Lincolnshire Partnership NHS Foundation Trust (LPFT) and Lincolnshire Community Health Services NHS Trust (LCHS) were above the national average, with 61 per cent of staff answering the questions for LPFT and 55 per cent for LCHS. Both trusts also showed a marked improvement across a number of key areas.

The independently organised, survey, was carried out between October and December 2018 across 304 NHS organisations and was designed around ten themes. It is used by NHS organisations and regulators such as the Care Quality Commission (CQC), to help improve staff and patient experience and ensure safety and quality standards.

Both trusts scored above the national average for staff engagement when compared with organisations of a similar type, each scoring 7.3 out of 10. This shows staff feel able to contribute towards improvements at work and morale and motivation are good.

LPFT performed mainly above the national average for mental health trusts in responses to questions on the ten themes. Nine areas, including health and wellbeing, morale, safety and staff engagement all scored above the national average and only one area, ‘safe environment – violence’ was equal to the national average.

Anne-Maria Newham MBE, interim chief executive at LPFT, said she was pleased to see staff recognised the trust’s top priority as service users and that the results reflected the staff engagement culture: "The NHS Staff Survey is a vital indicator of the Trust’s employment performance and we take the results very seriously. I am grateful that so many of our staff completed the 2018 survey.

“There is much to celebrate in these results; alongside patient safety, staff satisfaction and engagement is one of our top priorities and having staff who feel trusted and valued is important to us. It’s good to see these findings tally with the CQC ratings of Good overall and Outstanding for well-led, which we received recently.

“However, we acknowledge we have some work to do around safety and harassment, even though we are in line with national averages. There will be further analysis of the findings to establish areas of improvement, to ensure our staff are continually supported to deliver high quality mental health and learning disability services to our patients, service users and their families and carers.”

LCHS also saw improvements compared to 2017 in staff engagement and satisfaction. This included positive results for ‘communication between senior managers and staff is effective’ and ‘senior managers try to involve staff in important decisions’.

LCHS scores were above the national average in seven of the ten areas, with three themes, health and wellbeing, quality of appraisals and quality of care being significantly above the average for community trusts. Two areas were in line with national averages and one fell just below.

Andrew Morgan, chief executive of LCHS, said: “Our overall results reflect improvements across the board, which I am really pleased to see. More of our staff have said they feel valued, they make a difference to patient care and say care is LCHS’s top priority. Furthermore, 80 per cent say they would be happy with the standard of care if a friend or relative needed treatment.

“I am also pleased to see our staff engagement scores continue to increase, which was also an area of outstanding practice recognised by the CQC as it rated the trust overall as ‘Outstanding’ earlier in 2018.

“We are already working on those areas where improvement is required, including regarding bullying and harassment, which was the only themed area where the trust scored below the national average for community trusts. We do not tolerate this kind of behaviour and will be doing all we can to take action against it.”

To view the full NHS Staff Survey Results click here.