Healthcare Commission EEAS Staff Survey Results
The Healthcare Commission, the independent watchdog for healthcare in England, has revealed the findings of last years survey of staff working for the East of England Ambulance Service.
The results are not at all surprising to us as they clarify many of the concerns that we and our members have about the management and operational decisions being made within the Trust post merger.
There is a full version of the report available. The Commission has kindly provided a summery version for the ease of reading. Ideally the report should be read in full because it does highlight some positive aspects of change based on the feedback of staff. However, the vast majority of answers provided by staff reveal a disappointing state of affairs which we continue to be concerned about.
The annual NHS staff survey was carried out between October and December by 160,000 workers from all 390 NHS trusts in the country. It is run by watchdog the Healthcare Commission and is one of the largest surveys of staff in the world.
The East of England Ambulance Trust did particularly poorly. On the 37 key measures, the trust was worse than the average of other ambulance trusts on 24, average on 11 and better than average on just two. Where the same question was asked in 2007, performance had generally got worse.
Staff were more likely than average to say they were thinking about leaving, and just 6% said there was good communication between workers and senior management, compared with 10% at other ambulance trusts.
Human resources director Seamus Elliott said: “The trust will now put together an action plan to address key matters arising from these results to help improve working lives, as these can have a positive impact on patient care.”
There are also concerns about the state of ambulances. In this region, 52% of ambulance staff said vehicles were not in a good state of repair and 45% said their vehicles were not a safe place to work - worse than the national figures.
Healthcare Commission chief executive Anna Walker said: “There are real lessons to be learnt from
this survey about leadership, management and teamwork.”
The findings of the Healthcare Commission's reports are made public with a view to improving the various health Trusts. This highlights the need to all staff to return their staff surveys if they are sent one.
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