Quality care for (almost) all
August 20th, 2009 by Sean Trainor
Last week the Prime Minister and his wife added their Tweets to thousands of heartfelt declarations from patients, nurses and other medical practitioners on Twitter’s #welovetheNHS topic.
PM: NHS often makes the difference between pain and comfort, despair and hope, life and death. Thanks for always being there,”
Sarah Brown: “#welovetheNHS – more than words can say.”
What a shame the 45,000 NHS workers* who call in sick each day dont exhibit the same level of advocacy. This is one and a half times the average for private industry.
*From a recent government review assessing links between staff habits and NHS productivity Fat, unfit NHS staff top the sick league
Unsurprisingly, the report shows that hospitals with the poorest staff health are less productive. Three-quarters of staff believe that the state of their health affects patient care. Disturbingly, they are proven right as hospitals with the worst staff well-being have higher patient mortality rates.
The report concludes that there must be a complete NHS culture change to make workforce health “the responsibility of every single member of staff”. It underlines the irony of the NHS’s focus on the public health agenda whilst not investing in their own staff to become exemplars.
“High quality care for all” has always been the central guiding principle for NHS staff – it’s what the NHS brand stands for. They now have evidence that there is a large gap between what they do and what they say they do.We see this gap in a lot of organisations we work with.
Closing the gap. That’s what we help organisations do; helping them to improve the health of their brand.
We know from experience and from research that the health of any brand is directly related to the level of internal advocacy. Investment in engaging employees around the organisation’s central guiding principle (their brand) is the medicine to boost internal advocacy.