News

2018 National NHS Staff Survey in England

The results of the 2018 NHS Staff Survey have been published today by The Co-ordination Centre (Picker Institute Europe) on behalf of NHS England. This is the sixteenth 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 304 NHS organisations were invited to take part in the 2018 survey, and almost 10,000 more responses were received than in 2017.

Over 497,000 staff responded to the 2018 survey, a response rate of 46% (compared to a response rate of 45% in 2017).

The fieldwork for the survey was carried out in October and November 2018.

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

There were a number of changes to the survey in 2018; 5 questions have been removed, 2 questions have been amended and 8 questions have been added. New questions have been added to assess aspects of morale around stress and thinking about leaving. Questions that asses the quality of non-mandatory training have been removed. A document explaining the changes is available at www.nhsstaffsurveys.com.

Additionally, the reporting has changed for 2018. Following consultation with the Staff Survey Advisory Group and feedback from participating organisations, ten themes have been agreed for 2018 that will be presented instead of key findings. Key findings are available at organisational level to help with this transition, excepting three that are not reported for 2018 due to questionnaire changes.

Nine of the ten themes have been calculated for historical data to allow for comparisons. Of these, five themes have improved, and four have deteriorated. The last theme is based primarily on questions that are new for the 2018 survey.

The results are available via a series of dashboards at www.nhsstaffsurveyresults.com.