The NHS Staff Survey provides valuable insight into what the NHS workforce is thinking and feeling. Perception measures such as these are key to assessing how open NHS culture is. They provide better insight into whether there is a positive culture of speaking up than simply measuring how many cases Guardians handle, how many grievances are submitted, or how many safety incidents are reported - these measure activity, not whether staff feel able to speak up. Staff survey measures, however, are a measure of
confidence and trust and we always want these to be high, irrespective of the number of speaking up cases that are recorded.
As usual, we awaited the results of the latest NHS staff survey with a sense of curiosity and optimism. Unfortunately, as we experienced last year, we found our optimism was unfounded. The indicators we have looked at have barely shifted and overall are, once more, slightly down on previous years.
We can only reach one conclusion – things must change. The same approach, the same narrative, the same direction, will inevitably lead to the same results.