NHS Staff Survey National Results 2023 (7 March 2024)

Summary

The NHS Staff survey is one of the largest workforce surveys in the world and is carried out every year to improve staff experiences across the NHS. It asks staff in England about their experiences of working for their respective NHS organisations. Of the 1.4 million NHS employees in England, 707,604 staff responded to the survey in 2023.

Content

Responses to key patient safety questions in this year’s survey included:

Reporting of errors, near misses and incidents

• 33.19% of staff have seen errors, near misses or incidents that could have hurt staff and/or patients/service users in the last month, down from 33.40% in 2022.
• 59.45% of staff said their organisation treats staff who are involved in an error, near miss or incident fairly, up on 58.17% in 2022.
• 86.33% of staff said their organisation encourages staff to report errors, near misses or incidents, up from 86.07% in 2022.
• 68.15% of staff said that when errors, near misses or incidents are reported, their organisation takes action to ensure that they do not happen again, up on 67.37% in 2022.
• 60.92% of staff said that they are given feedback about changes made in response to reported errors, near misses and incidents, up on 59.80% in 2022.

Concerns about clinical safety

• 71.28% would feel secure raising concerns about unsafe clinical practice, down from 71.89% in 2022. When it comes to concerns about clinical safety, the percentage of staff who feel secure raising such concerns is now at a five-year low.
• 56.81% were confident that their organisation would address their concern, up from 56.73% in 2022.

Speaking up about concerns

• 62.31% feel safe to speak up about anything that concerns them in their organisation, up from 61.52% in 2022.
• 50.07% were confident that their organisation would address their concern, up from 48.69% in 2022.

Care for patients and service users

• 75.14% said that care of patients / service users in their organisation’s top priority, up from 74.09% in 2022.
• 70.55% agree that their organisation acts on concerns raised by patients and service users, up from 69.11% in 2022.

Workload and resources

• 46.71% of staff are able to meet all conflicting demands on their time at work, up from 42.99% in 2022.
• 58.49% of staff have adequate materials, supplies and equipment to do their work, up from 55.64% in 2022.
• 32.40% of staff said there are enough staff at their organisation for them to do their job properly, up from 26.39% in 2022.