Leading nurses have developed a test to identify whether a workplace is suffering from a culture problem akin to that which contributed to the care failings at Mid Staffordshire Foundation Trust.
The “cultural barometer” can be used in any healthcare setting by individuals, nursing teams or as part of a wider organisational review.
It has been developed by a group of six leading nursing figures who came together in 2011 to call for improvements in the profession.
The group includes Sir Stephen Moss, former chair of Mid Staffordshire FT, crossbench peer Baroness Emerton and Dame Elizabeth Fradd, who led the government’s health visitor taskforce.
The group has drawn on their own experiences and research into 50 organisations to develop a two-page questionnaire, which aims to probe the attitude, values and culture of organisations.
It asks staff if they think senior managers have an understanding of how things “really are” and whether their concerns are listened to.
Dame Elizabeth Fradd told HSJ’s sister title Nursing Times: “One thing that rarely gets attention is the culture of an organisation, we never get under the skin of an organisation.”
4 Readers' comments