Safer staffing: nursing and midwifery
Evidence-based decision-making on safe and effective staffing is a requirement for all NHS organisations.
The information and resources on these safer staffing pages will support and enable NHS providers to make these decisions, and ensure safe, sustainable and productive workforce planning and compliance with annual governance reporting on safe staffing.
Contents:
Developing workforce safeguards
National Quality Board guidance on safe staffing
Winter 2022 preparedness
Respiratory syncytial virus 2021 preparedness
Safe staffing improvement resources for specific settings
Developing workforce safeguards
This document provides a comprehensive set of guidelines on workforce planning and includes recommendations on reporting and governance approaches.
It also shares best practice on workforce decision-making, including stronger board engagement.
NHS providers are assessed against their compliance with the recommendations in this guidance to support a consistent approach to workforce decision-making.
National Quality Board guidance on safe staffing
This guidance sets out the National Quality Board’s expectations for nursing and midwifery staffing to help NHS provider boards make local decisions that will deliver high-quality care for patients within the available staffing resource.
This guidance should also be referred to when using our setting-specific safe staffing improvement resources.
Winter 2022 preparedness
The Staffing assurance framework for winter 2022 sets out key actions on preparedness, decision-making and escalation processes to support safer nursing and midwifery staffing during the winter period.
The framework builds on the previous guidance issued in relation to COVID-19 workforce models and the fundamental principles for the nursing and midwifery workforce as set out in the National Quality Board (NQB) Safe sustainable and productive staffing guidance. The document summarises and signposts to existing resources, tools and templates in support of nursing and midwifery workforce planning, preparation, and board assurance.
Respiratory syncytial virus 2021 preparedness
Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) 2021 preparedness: children’s safer nurse staffing framework for inpatient care in acute hospitals guidance has been developed to support the redeployment planning processes to respond to the anticipated earlier and greater than usual increase in RSV and other respiratory illnesses in children, which could increase pressure on paediatric critical and inpatient care.
Safe staffing improvement resources for specific settings
Improvement resources that support and enable NHS providers to make safe and sustainable staffing decisions in specific care settings are available on this page.