The results of the 2017 NHS Staff Survey have been published today by The Co-ordination Centre (Picker Institute Europe) on behalf of NHS England. This is the fifteenth annual national survey of NHS staff.

Since 2013, participating organisations have been able to conduct the survey as a census or extended sample and this option is increasingly being adopted. Over one million staff across 309 NHS organisations were invited to take part in the 2017 survey , with more than 110,000 extra staff invited to participate compared to 2016.

Over 487,000 staff responded to the 2017 survey, a response rate of 45% (compared to a response rate of 44% in 2016).

The fieldwork for the survey was carried out in October and November 2017.

The survey results and associated documentation can be viewed at the National NHS Staff Survey Co-ordination Centre.

There was one change to the survey in 2017; two new response options of “Prefer to self-describe” with a free text option and “Prefer not to say” have been added Q23a (Gender). This does not affect results unless looking at a breakdown by this specific demographic variable, in which case caution must be exercised. All other questions are comparable to 2016 and 2015, however the substantial revision to the survey in 2015 means that some questions and key findings are not comparable to 2014.

The survey results are published for individual questions and for 32 Key Findings that have been designed to give more information about particular areas of interest. Of the 32 Key Findings, 11 have shown improvement and 21 have deteriorated since 2016 .