UHDB receives national recognition for promoting culture of openness
UHDB’s commitment to encouraging staff to come forward and express any concerns they have has resulted in the Trust being shortlisted for a prestigious national award.
Alison Bell was appointed as the Trust’s first ever Freedom to Speak Up Guardian in January 2017 and has since gone on to play a major role in helping staff from across our five hospitals feel comfortable speaking up.
The focus of the Freedom to Speak Up Guardian role is to act as a main point of contact for any staff member who spots wrongdoing, malpractice, or wants to raise a concern, with this information then being fed back to the Trust Board and then used to improve the quality of care offered to patients.
Encouraging this culture of openness has seen more UHDB staff feel able to come forward and raise concerns confidentially, with the Trust actually seeing a 287% increase in the number of colleagues using the service to speak up, from June 2017-March 2019.
This fantastic work has now seen UHDB shortlisted for ‘Freedom to Speak Up Organisation of the Year’ at the upcoming HSJ Awards.
Alison said: “We’re absolutely committed to making our Trust the best it can be, so it is vital that our staff do feel that they are able to speak up when they see something that’s not right. Developing this trust and confidence is so important because, without staff feeling safe to come forward, we would miss out on a big opportunity to use this information to improve the level of care we offer. Speaking up can create a lot of anxiety, so I see it as a real privilege to be that person staff can confide in and am extremely proud to have seen the positive impact this service has had across UHDB.”
The Freedom to Speak Up Guardian role has been extremely positively received by UHDB staff, with one colleague confiding that, after making the decision to raise a concern: “Everything just feels easier and our team feels like a happy place again.”
In fact, confidence in the service has increased so much that 46% of those that made the decision to speak up decided against doing so anonymously and spoke to Alison directly instead.
Staff have also been encouraged to raise any concerns that they may have at a series of confidential drop-in surgeries held across all of our hospitals, which are run by Alison and Sir Stephen Moss, UHDB Non-Executive Director for Speaking Up.
She added: “We’re absolutely delighted to have received this recognition from the HSJ Awards but want to do more to promote a culture of openness, so that more staff feel comfortable to raise any issues they may see. The surgeries have been really worthwhile in doing this and have actually been picked up as areas of good practice by other Trusts. Sir Stephen has been instrumental in supporting me to get the message out there and it has been really important for staff to see the Trust Board’s support for this project.”
The HSJ Awards will take place on 6 November.