Positive progress revealed in annual staff survey

More staff would recommend North East Ambulance Service as a place to work and receive treatment, according to annual NHS survey.

Every year NHS staff, including those working for North East Ambulance Service (NEAS) are offered the chance to have their say about their organisation in a national staff survey.

This year’s survey, filled in by 888 NEAS staff, revealed that more staff would recommend the organisation as a place to work and receive treatment.

Staff reported receiving better support from managers, seeing positive action taken on health and well-being, and feeling more motivated.

There was also a reduction in the number of staff who said they had suffered from work-related stress in the last 12 months.

Areas for improvement were found in some areas, including increasing flexible working opportunities, ensuring equal career progression opportunities and reducing bullying and harassment.

Covering an area of 3,200 square miles across the North East region, NEAS employs more than 2,500 staff and serves a population of 2.7 million people by handling all NHS 111 and 999 calls for the region, operating patient transport and ambulance response services, delivering training for communities and commercial audiences and providing medical support cover at events.

In 2014/15 the service answered 1.107 million emergency 999 and NHS 111 calls, responded to 302,687 incidents that resulted in a patient being taken to hospital, treated and discharged 18,144 patients with telephone advice and treated and discharged 81,990 patients at home. 

Over the last year, the Trust has introduced new clinical managers to provide more frontline support, increased management and stress training, expanded counselling provision and improved internal communications.

It is now in the top 50 Stonewall Employers list and is also one of the few accredited ambulance services by the Bullying Intervention Group.

Yvonne Ormston, NEAS Chief Executive, said: “The results are extremely positive and confirm that the NEAS journey is well and truly underway. Although there is clearly still work to do to improve the experience of our staff, when we compare the results to last year, we scored better in 45% of the questions, which is a fantastic outcome for us.

“We’re disappointed that staff don’t feel we’ve improved enough in some areas, particularly in light of our Bullying Intervention Group award and the work we’re doing to improve our policies and train mediators, but I would like to reassure our staff that this will be something we will focus on over the next year.

“I would like to thank everyone who took the time to take part. The feedback received as a result of this survey helps us to see what we are doing well as well as the areas we need to be addressing in the coming year to ensure we respond to the issues raised.”

The full report, alongside a summarised version of it, is available to view at www.nhsstaffsurveys.com

ENDS