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EDITOR

NHS is holding up well despite staff pressures Read the press release from NHS England and you could be forgiven for thinking that its latest staff survey has produced overwhelmingly positive findings. It is true that there has been progress on most measures, but in key areas major problems persist. For example, the press release does not mention that only 30 per cent of the 203,000 respondents reported that there are enough staff to enable them to do their jobs properly. A similarly low proportion said their managers involve staff in important decisions, and only slightly more said they feel communication between managers and staff is effective. Just 28 per cent reported that senior managers act on feedback from staff.

NURSES’ APPRAISALS WILL BE TAKING ON GREATER IMPORTANCE

With the Nursing and Midwifery Council’s plans for revalidation starting to take shape, nurses’ annual appraisals will take on greater importance. The regulator would like employers to verify that their nurses are fit to remain on its register, and is consulting on plans to link revalidation to the appraisal system. So the NHS is going to have to do better: it is good news that 85 per cent of nurses reported having had an appraisal, but worrying that only 42 per cent said theirs had been well structured. The sheer scale of the English health service, with its 1.3 million staff, can make some figures misleading. Only 6 per cent of survey respondents said they had experienced discrimination at work from patients, relatives or other members of the public in the previous 12 months – but that translates to 78,000 people on the receiving end.

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Neil Churchill, director of patient experience at NHS England, is right when he says the figures paint a picture of a system holding up well under pressure, and it is encouraging to hear him add ‘we have further to go’. Despite the incremental improvements in many of the 28 key findings, there is no room for complacency. See news page 7 Air your views on

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march 5 :: vol 28 no 27 :: 2014 3

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NHS is holding up well despite staff pressures.

Read the press release from NHS England and you could be forgiven for thinking that its latest staff survey has produced overwhelmingly positive findi...
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