Staff unhappy with standard of care at hospitals

Fewer than half of workers at East Kent hospitals are content with the standard of care

An NHS survey has revealed that fewer than half of staff at a Kent hospitals trust would be happy for loved ones to be treated there.

In what bosses concede is a “shocking indictment”, just 45% of workers at East Kent Hospitals Trust are content with the standard of care – one of the lowest in England.

Even fewer, at 44%, would recommend it as a place to work – again the worst of 122 acute trusts in the country.

Chairman of the trust's board, Stewart Baird, said: “We acknowledge they are shocking, they are really bad and we have got a huge amount of work to do to rebuild trust.”

With hospitals spread across Ashford, Dover, Canterbury, Margate and Folkestone, East Kent Hospitals University Foundation Trust (EKHUFT) is one of the UK’s largest.

Only 45.13% agreed with the statement “if a friend or relative needed treatment I would be happy with the standard of care” at the trust, while the average across the NHS is 63.32%, the Local Democracy Reporting Service said.

The results of the survey showed 60.55% of those asked said that care of patients and users was the trust’s “top priority” – also the worst of the 122 NHS trusts that run hospitals, and worse than Maidstone & Tunbridge Wells, where the result was 80.5%.

“It is awful, there’s no other word for it,” said Mr Baird.

Andrea Ashman, chief people officer at the East Kent trust said that the board had “touched base” with approximately 750 staff about the results “through a series of executive-led listening events”.