Members of the team of the year, with Ben Hearndean third left and at the left end of the row, Stuart Tuckwood, UNISON national nursing officer
Ben Hearndean, associate director of nursing in the emergency department at William Harvey Hospital in Ashford, Kent, is having a fraught day. He and his team have a number of “complex patients” who need “multi-agency approaches” at the same time as being in the middle of an office move that isn’t proving as straightforward as hoped.
But he’s still taken a few minutes out to talk about how the team won the UNISON-sponsored Nursing Times team of the year award for 2024 and what it means to them.
After Care Quality Commission (CQC) inspections in 2020 and 2023, urgent action was needed in order to minimise the risk to patients.
The identified problems included a high turnover of registered staff, with exit interviews revealing a lack of career progression and education as common reasons for leaving the department, alongside burnout, which also kept sickness rates high. Recruitment was a massive problem. Among the registered staff, approximately 60% had less than a year’s emergency department experience.
Working alongside Canterbury Christ Church University, the nursing team developed an accredited emergency department nursing education programme. It is delivered by emergency department nursing staff, with competency supervision provided by the senior nursing team and practice development nurses, and final sign off from the nursing education lead.
“The effect that winning the award has had on the entire team is fantastic,” says Ben, but points out that there are some “key people” who have led on specific elements in teams within the wider team.
He cites Tom, his deputy, for having the bravery to recognise the reality of the situation in the department and, “no matter how difficult it might seem”, seeing it as an “opportunity to take everyone who wants to come”.
He adds that Alison, “our overall education lead”, had the vision from the start.
Ben speaks of how important resilience has been, together with a “drive and desire to want to get to where we are now”, in having brought such significant improvements that the department is near to closing all outstanding actions that the CQC had called for.
Members of the team on a visit to UNISON Centre
He stresses that everyone in the department receives the same training, the same updates, the same opportunities and wellbeing support, while processes around managing sickness absence have been improved to catch potential problems early.
Staff turnover is now below the national threshold of 10%, meaning the department has also been able to recruit more staff. That has also reduced sickness absence to continuously below 5% – more staff, less burnout.
Indeed, across the department, staffing levels have gone from 162 and will be hitting 210 before long.
The union’s national nursing officer Stuart Tuckwood explains: “UNISON sponsors this high-profile award because team working is fundamental to succeeding in healthcare – we can only overcome the big challenges we are facing by recognising the contributions of all our colleagues and enabling their potential.
“The team in Kent impressed us so much because they listened to the ideas of everyone in their team and worked truly collaboratively to make them a reality. They’ve turned around a really struggling department because they trusted their staff and focussed on supporting them so they could in turn care for their patients better.
“They should be very proud – NHS teams all across the country will be looking to them as an inspiration.”
The award itself “means the world to the entire team,” says Ben. “It’s hard to put into words the recognition and a kind of ‘thank you’ … how do you thank many people for what they do, when they’re doing it in the toughest conditions?
“We’re on an improvement journey. We haven’t got it right. We’ve still got instances where we need to reflect on our care and move that forward, but the balance has tipped and we’re getting a lot more right than we’re getting wrong – and we’re still continuing to learn.”
He explains that, if he’s talking to a member of staff and they’re a bit down around a piece of work that needs doing, he says: ‘Well that’s not a team of the year approach, is it?
“Of course we’re going to lead on that – so yes, it’s fantastic!”