Freedom to Speak Up (FTSU) is vital in healthcare – it can be a matter of life or death. When workers feel psychologically safe, they will speak up to avoid harm, bring great ideas and be able to express their concerns. The National Guardian’s Office believes a good speaking up culture makes for a safer workplace, for workers, patients and service users.
The FTSU Index is based on responses in the NHS Annual Staff Survey and helps to indicate whether Freedom to Speak Up is embedded within the organisation and if staff feel knowledgeable, encouraged and supported to raise concerns. The index also reflects whether they agree they would be treated fairly if involved in an error, near miss or incident.
MPFT scores 82% in this year’s index, putting it within the top 40 trusts in the country and the highest scoring in Staffordshire. This is an increase on last year’s result of 81% and compares well with the national average of 79%.
Freedom to Speak Up Guardian Kath Chambers said, “We are committed to ensuring all our staff feel able to speak up and share any concerns and our FTSU guardians and a network of Champions offer support and encouragement to anyone who has an issue to raise. We are pleased that we benchmark well with our peers but recognise we can always do better. We carefully review the responses to the NHS Staff Survey and work hard to share good practice and continually improve what we do”.
Helene Donnelly, Ambassador for Cultural Change / Lead Freedom to Speak Up Guardian added “We believe compassionate and collective leadership is integral to staff feeling enabled and encouraged to speak up to their managers about any concerns they may have. This is vital for both patient safety and staff wellbeing, and we invite all staff to work with us to continuously improve.
Alex Brett, Director of Workforce and Development added, “At MPFT we have placed a real emphasis on creating an open culture where staff are able to speak up, where they feel valued and that their opinions count. We have focused on supporting staff health and wellbeing and ensuring leaders at all levels of the organisation live our values and model the behaviours our staff, service users, patients and carers identified as important.”