We’ve won two RLDatix awards, which recognise healthcare organisations that are using innovation to improve patient safety and quality of care.

Our Workforce team won the Sustainable Organisation award, in recognition of our Workforce Control Improvement Programme (the team collecting the award are pictured above).

The programme aimed to reduce our temporary staffing expenditure, which made up 27 per cent of our total pay spend. It included improvements to our workforce systems, effective roster management, enforcement of rate caps, and workforce planning and recruitment.

It has seen our temporary pay bill fall to 16 per cent, reducing our overall temporary staffing costs by around £10m a year, while our permanent workforce has increased by 750. Approval of nursing rotas six weeks in advance also increased from 40 per cent, to 100 per cent.

Adam Souris, Associate Director of Workforce, said: “This programme was a major project for our Trust over the last 18 months and was only made possible thanks to a collaborative approach across clinical, workforce, finance, and operational and analytical teams.

“The award recognises the significant improvements we made in a challenging environment. By targeting on premium costs, we’ve were able to run our services more efficiently with a focus on driving a safe and sustainable organisation.”

Our Nursing Workforce Hub team were presented with the Safer Care Award (above), recognising how we’ve used data ‘from board to ward’ in a meaningful way to make decisions about patient safety.

The hub was set up during the Covid-19 pandemic to ensure safe staffing across our nursing teams, particularly at a time when staffing levels were challenged due to the spread of the infection.

The benefits of the hub have continued long after lockdowns. The team, which is made up of clinical nursing staff, gives operational support on a daily basis, and their oversight of our nursing workforce has enabled them to improve quality of care and efficiency across our hospitals.

One of the key benefits has been reducing our reliance on temporary staff, which has helped improve patient safety and our finances. Thanks to the hub, our last nursing ‘red’ shift (where patients could be at risk of harm due to staff shortages on our wards), was in January 2022.

Alexia Young, Associate Director of our Nursing Workforce Hub, said: “Our hub’s focus has always been improving patient safety and staff wellbeing.

“This award for safer nursing care recognises all the hard work of the team so far and is a testament to how a centralised approach benefits both our patients and staff.”