Lincolnshire 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.

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 and improved on last year, with 64 per cent of staff answering questions for LPFT and 71 per cent for LCHS. LCHS had the highest national response rate out of the 16 community trusts.

The independently organised survey was carried out between October and November 2019 across 300 NHS organisations and was designed around eleven 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.

Out of the eleven themes, LPFT improved in seven and maintained last year’s scores in the other four. All but one of the themes scored above the national average, with health and wellbeing, morale, safety culture and team working all benchmarking amongst the very best scores for mental health and learning disability trusts.

Brendan Hayes, chief executive at LPFT, said: “Overall we are happy with these results. We are very pleased our staff feel even more confident in raising concerns about unsafe clinical practice and have faith in us addressing and acting on these concerns.

“We are also grateful that around 72% of staff would recommend the Trust as a place to work and receive treatment, which is a further improvement on what staff told us in 2018 and 10% higher than the average.

“There is always more we can do to improve our staff experience of working for us and whilst our performance across all themes is positive, we will continue to work with staff to make further improvements.”

LCHS scores were above the national average in six areas, equality, diversity and inclusion, health & wellbeing, quality of appraisal, quality of care, safety culture and staff engagement. Two areas were in line with national averages and one fell just below.

Maz Fosh, Chief Executive of LCHS said: “I am delighted with the number of our staff who completed their surveys last year. Our response rate being the highest of all NHS community trusts is a great achievement.

“I am pleased with the results; we have improved some of our scores on last year in several areas including bullying and harassment, which was a priority for us and in equality, diversity and inclusion, health and wellbeing, which reflects how seriously we take these areas for the benefit of our staff and patients.

“However we acknowledge we need to work on several themes including staff morale and quality of care, even though we are in line with national averages.”