Our Organisation

Our goal is to be a world-class centre of clinical and academic achievement, where staff work together to ensure patients receive the highest standards of care and the best people want to come to learn, work and research. We have created a vision document that sets out our vision for the future and our plans to become a successful, competitive partner in the healthcare economy.

2025Vision has been set in the context of national and international trends in demography, technology and globalisation as well as being firmly rooted in the plans of the local health community in North and South Staffordshire.

It is closely aligned with the NHS health plans, which will move care closer to people's homes, increase patient choice and develop regional models for specialist services. Over the last year we have worked with our key stakeholders to ensure our vision for the future is fully supported by NHS partner organisations. To achieve 2025Vision we will be challenged to respond with care and insight to the emerging market for healthcare provision in the UK. At the same time, staying true to our values during a period of rapid reform will be critical to our success.

Achieving organisational and cultural change will also be necessary if we are to be a serious contributor to healthcare innovation globally. In order to invest in tomorrow we must increase our income and minimise our costs today and we will need leadership inside and outside the Trust that understands this imperative. We will also be reliant on the help of others and must be open to working in partnership with outside organisations as well as engaged in a constructive relationship with staff, patients and the public.

Read the University Hospitals of North Midlands 2025 Vision

Read the University Hospitals of North Midlands ​People Strategy

At UHNM we have created a unique set of values and promises which were developed by staff, patients and carers. Our values are: Together, Compassion, Safe and Improving.

Launched at the Trust AGM in October 2017, our refreshed values and promises underpin everything we do and help us to achieve our vision. 

Why do we need values?
97% of the UK’s greatest places to work have organisational values. They put their values at the heart of everything they do and they believe their success is
due to their values

• What makes UHNM unique? What is important at UHNM? Our own organisational values describe this.
• When we welcome employees to the UHNM family we want people who also ‘live our values’. We can always train them in skills.
• Our values and promises influence how the staff here at UHNM act; we will feel it and our patients will feel it.
• We need to be recruiting people against our values and need to be holding people to account.
• They inspire people into action. People take positive action because they aspire to live up to our values and feel safe and empowered to innovate as a result.
• We are striving to achieve our Vision – how we do this successfully will be by living our values
• Simply put, they shape our organisational culture, if we love them, then we will live them!

​​​​The Trust Board is responsible for the Trust and holds monthly Board meetings held in public. Divisions reporting to the Executive team are:

- Medicine

- Surgical

- Network services

- Women's, Children's and Clinical Support Services

- Estates, Facilities and PFI

- North Midlands and Cheshire Pathology Services

Each clinical division has a divisional board, which includes a Clinical Chair, Clinical Directors, Associate Chief Nurse and Associate Director, along with other representatives.​​​

We love our values and we've created the 'values recognition scheme' to help to show appreciation to all our staff who show that they love and live them too.

If someone has done something big or small which has made a real difference to you as a patient, family member, carer, visitor or colleague, you can say thank you by nominating them here​.

Each and every staff member who is nominated will be sent a 'thank you' card with your message and badge representing the value they've demonstrated.  When someone has received separate nominations for all four values, they will then automatically receive a 'thank you' from the Trust CEO and a special heart-shaped badge featuring all four values.

Each year we care for over two million people who come to us for emergency treatment, planned operations and medical care. We are a teaching hospital in partnership with Keele University and we have a patient-centred clinical research facility providing state-of-the-art facilities. Our new £370m hospital became fully operational in 2015.  For more information on how we fit into the NHS structure, click here.

University Hospital has two sites: Royal Stoke University Hospital, located in Stoke-on-Trent, and County Hospital, located in Stafford.

From these hospitals we provide a full range of general acute hospital services for approximately 700,000 people living in and around Staffordshire and beyond. The Trust also provides specialised services, such as Trauma, for three million people in a wider area, including neighbouring counties and North Wales. 

Our specialised services include cancer diagnosis and treatment, cardiothoracic surgery, neurosurgery, renal and dialysis services, neonatal intensive care and paediatric intensive care. We are also recognised for our particular expertise in trauma, respiratory conditions, spinal surgery, upper gastro-intestinal surgery, complex orthopaedic surgery, laparoscopic surgery and the management of liver conditions. The Trust has some of the most modern operating theatres in Europe.

More than 165,000 patients attend our Accident and Emergency department. Many emergency patients are brought to us from a wide area by both helicopter and land ambulance because of our Major Trauma Centre status. 

UHNM has pledged to improve patient safety  as part of the National Sign upto Safety Campaign.

A patient safety campaign, Sign up to Safety is one of a set of national initiatives in England to help the NHS improve the safety of patient care. Collectively and cumulatively these initiatives aim to reduce avoidable harm by 50% and support the ambition to save 6,000 lives.

So far 300 NHS organisations have pledged support to this growing movement and are committed to improve the safety of healthcare through locally-owned and self-directed Safety Improvement Plans. These outline the actions that will be taken in response to five Sign up to Safety pledges.

Liz Rix, Chief Nurse at UHNM, said: "By joining Sign up to Safety, we are promising all patients and staff in UHNM that we are placing the safety of patient care above all else.

"We will achieve this by focusing on the areas we know can be improved to make care safer. We are committed to supporting our staff to be open with patients about the potential for things to go wrong and, most importantly, to continually learn from incidents in order to improve."

Suzette Woodward, Sign up to Safety Campaign Director, said: "Our ambition is for the whole NHS in England to become the safest healthcare system in the world and UHNM is playing a critical part in helping to achieve this.

"We all recognise that healthcare carries some risk and while everyone working in the NHS works hard every day to reduce this risk, harm still happens. Whenever possible, we must do all we can to deliver harm-free care for each and every patient. We are helping each NHS organisation involved in Sign up to Safety to work on the things that matter to them and keep local solutions localised, but help to share learning nationally for others to adapt."

Together we are helping the NHS to make improvements and creating a supportive, open and transparent environment for all patients and staff."

The five Sign up to Safety pledges are:

• Put safety first. Commit to reducing avoidable harm in the NHS by half and make public the goals and plans developed locally.
• Continually learn. Be more resilient to risks as an organisation, by acting on the feedback from patients and by constantly measuring and monitoring how safe services are.
• Be Honest. Be transparent with people about progress to tackle patient safety issues and support staff to be candid with patients and their families if something goes wrong.
• Collaborate. Take a leading role in supporting local collaborative learning, so that improvements are made across all of the local services that patients use.
• Be Supportive. Help people understand why things go wrong and how to put them right. Give staff the time and support to improve and celebrate progress.

To find out more about UHNM's commitment to the National Sign upto Safety Campaign and to make your pledges, please contact Debra Meehan, Deputy Director of Nursing – Quality & Safety on 01782 672441

University Hospitals of North Midlands NHS Trust supports the Nursing Times Speak Out Safely campaign. This means we encourage any staff member who has a genuine patient safety concern to raise this within the organisation at the earliest opportunity.

Patient safety is our prime concern and our staff are often best placed to identify where care may be falling below the standard our patients deserve. In order to ensure our high standards continue to be met, we want every member of our staff to feel able to raise concerns with their line manager, or another member of the management team. We want everyone in the organisation to feel able to highlight wrongdoing or poor practice when they see it and confident that their concerns will be addressed in a constructive way.

We promise that where staff identify a genuine patient safety concern, we shall not treat them with prejudice and they will not suffer any detriment to their career. Instead, we will support them, fully investigate and, if appropriate, act on their concern. We will also give them feedback about how we have responded to the issue they have raised, as soon as possible.

It is not disloyal to colleagues to raise concerns; it is a duty to our patients. Misconduct or malpractice should never be tolerated, while mistakes and poor practice may reveal a colleague needs more training or support, or that we need to change systems or processes. Your concerns will be dealt with in an open and supportive manner because we rely on you to ensure we deliver a safe service and ensure patient safety is not put at risk. We also want this organisation to have the confidence to admit to mistakes and to use them as learning opportunities.

Whether you are a permanent employee, an agency or temporary staff member, or a volunteer, please speak up when you feel something is wrong. We want you to be able to Speak Out Safely.

University Hospitals of North Midlands NHS Trust (UHNM) is committed to the safety and wellbeing of all children entering the Trust and meets the statutory requirements in relation to safeguarding children. UHNM has a child protection policy which details the roles and responsibilities of all staff, the lines of accountability and defines the child protection training needs of all staff. UHNM has an active training program for staff. Training is in line with local and national guidance.

The UHNM has a child protection team consisting of professionals with particular expertise within child protection and safeguarding who are available for advice. The named and designated doctors and nurses making up the child protection team are also active members of the Local Safeguarding Children Boards. The UHNM has paediatricians on call for child protection matters 24 hours a day.

The UHNM has robust recruitment arrangements. The NHS Employers Guidance is adhered to by UHNM and the Trust has clear policies regarding criminal background checks and interviewing.

Dr Matthew Lewis, Medical Director at University of North Midlands Hospitals NHS Trust said:

“We take these matters very seriously and, after taking action to commission the independent report, we have already made progress on behalf of our workforce to tackle the issues highlighted including investment in a fulltime Freedom to Speak Up Guardian.

“We will not tolerate any form of discrimination, bullying or harassment within UHNM and will continue to work with Brap and Roger Kline to ensure that everyone who works in our hospitals is treated with respect and has the opportunity to develop a fulfilling career.”

Background

• brap was selected following discussions with other NHS trusts which have undertaken similar work.
• brap supports organisations, communities, and cities with meaningful approaches to learning, change, research, and engagement (www.brap.org.uk).
• Mr Roger Kline is a Research Fellow at Middlesex University Business School. He wrote 'The Snowy White Peaks of the NHS' – an influential report on discrimination and how it affects patient care – and designed the Workforce Race Equality Standard for the health service.
• The brap and Mr Kline independent review has encompassed a confidential survey of all UHNM staff which was administered by Picker in both electronic and paper format.
• Staff were also offered the opportunity to speak to brap and Mr Kline on a one to one basis and as groups of staff.
• In addition, brap and Mr Kline reviewed all previous internal and external surveys and nationally collected data.
• More than 3,500 staff took part in the anonymous survey and in addition, many staff also shared their experiences in group and one to one interviews.
• The work the Trust has committed to includes developing and improving training, recruitment and promotion processes and opportunities as well as seeking expertise to assist interventions and support staff where there are specific, ongoing issues.

Actions taken since the recent Mr Kline/Brap independent review

• Additional investment in a fulltime Freedom to Speak Up Guardian.
• Additional investment within the OD service which has enabled the development of further training for managers and leaders to develop a positive, inclusive culture/environment.
• Focused work on civility and respect, as well as a just and restorative culture, has commenced and this will be expanded across all areas of the Trust.
• Significant investment over the last three years into services and staffing.

STATEMENT FROM BRAP/ ROGER KLINE

Ghiyas Somra, People, Policy, and Research Manager at brap said:

“This has been a complex and challenging review. We would like to thank everyone who took the time to share their experiences and views on how the Trust can improve.

“Like any work of this nature, expectations have been raised and the Trust now has an evidence base on which it can assess its performance on tackling bullying and harassment.

“Our report shows that whilst the Trust is by no means an outlier in relation to this agenda there is still more to do.

“It is incumbent upon leadership in the Trust to set out clear expectations about the behaviours they wish to see. Report findings suggest a culture in which doctors don’t always feel respected and supported by their colleagues. This needs to change.

“Our review also shows there is work to do to support nursing and other medical staff who experience abuse and harassment from patients and the public. Unfortunately, the most common ground for this sort of harassment is staff members’ ethnicity. This is coupled with survey findings showing BME staff are 1.6 times more likely than White staff to report experiencing bullying/harassment from a colleague.

“Incivility is currently a hot topic in the sector, but these findings show we can’t forget the importance of tackling ethnicity-based harassment.

“We welcome the fact that the Trust has decided to publish these findings to allow an open and informed debate to take place with their staff and local population.

“As the Trust benefits from a relatively new leadership team, there is no better time for them to champion this agenda. They have a clear mandate from staff, who want positive change – not only for their own wellbeing but also for patients too.”

A copy of the review can be found here