The risks to care quality and staff wellbeing of an NHS system under pressure

This report uncovers the associations between NHS staff and patients’ experiences in hospitals and NHS trusts’ reliance on agency healthcare workers.

The analysis is the first of its kind to be published in the UK. It considers the relationships between the self-reported experiences and wellbeing of NHS staff, measures of workforce pressures in the health system, and patients’ experiences of their care.

The report reveals that there are relationships between staff wellbeing, patient experiences of their care, and the proportion of money NHS trusts spend on agency workers. In trusts where agency spend was higher as a proportion of overall pay, both staff wellbeing and patient experience were typically lower.