The Trust is committed to delivering safe and compassionate care. To do this we need to ensure that we have the right staff in the right place at the right time.

Our senior nursing team use monthly safe staffing data to analyse trends, plan future staffing requirements and ensure there is an appropriate skill mix on all in patient wards. Data is published a month in arrears and shows:

• The planned number of staff for each ward
• The actual number of staff for each ward
• A percentage ‘fill rate’ for staff which indicates if we met our planned number of staff

Maintaining safe staffing

We use a real-time monitoring system – our safe care tool – which allows the senior nursing team to view what’s happening in our inpatient wards at any given moment and assess requirements in terms of:

• Activity – how busy a particular ward is
• Acuity – how ill patients on a particular ward may be whether a higher level of care may be required, for example one to one nursing
• Unplanned staff absence – whether there are any unplanned absences that need to be covered

Data is reviewed by the senior nursing team together with feedback from twice daily safety huddles which report any specific issues or requirements. Nursing staff can then be redistributed and redeployed as required to ensure safe staffing is maintained.

More information

Information regarding safe staffing levels is reported to our Trust Board meetings – please click here to view monthly Board reports.  

If you have any concerns or questions about safe staffing at the Trust please contact our patient advice and liaison service: bht.pals@nhs.net 

Please click here to access data for previous years’ data

More information

For more information about our ward staffing data contact the Deputy Chief Nurse

To access data from previous months please click here.