Quality Watch: Analysis of Trends Affecting NHS Staff Stress and Wellbeing

Quality Watch's website, an excellent, independent resource

Quality Watch is an independent research programme actively monitoring the quality of care, funded by the Nuffield Trust and the Health Foundation. It's a great source of data with regard to trends affecting stress and wellbeing in NHS staff. Their analyses are very clear and easy to understand with a minimum of jargon. Overall, this a great resource and highly recommended.

I found three analyses on Quality Watch which are highly relevant to stress in the NHS...

This one looks at working in the NHS, with analyses of:

• How reported work pressures have changed over time (by an large they haven't across the NHS)
• Staff reporting working extra hours (recently, more reporting working extra hours)
• How working extra hours varied between staff groups (big differences!)
• Numbers of staff reporting being ill due to work-related stress (increasing)
• Differences between disabled and non-disabled staff groups reporting illness due to work-related stress (disabled group reporting much higher rates).

This one looks at NHS staff sickness absence, with analyses of:

• The slow decline in overall staff sickness absence in the last few years
• How sickness absence rates vary by Trust type
• How sickness absence rates vary by staff type (nursing and medical staff low, ambulance and support staff high - ambulance staff have around 5 times the rate of absence of medical and dental staff)
• The changing proportion of staff who feel under pressure to attend while ill

This one looks at whether NHS staff feel supported by their managers, with an analysis of:

• What staff say about managerial support and how this has changed

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