Mental health inpatient wards face persistent pressures: staff shortages, high turnover, hierarchical dynamics, traumatic incidents, racism, and disconnection from senior leadership. These directly undermine care quality. The evidence is unambiguous: incivility reduces performance, poor working conditions cost millions of lost working days, and racism is present in too many ward teams.

We are calling for providers to treat staff care and development as core safety and productivity infrastructure, to back locally-led culture change with executive sponsorship, and to support wards to co-produce culture change themselves.

Through our work on the Culture of Care: Staff Care & Development Programme, commissioned by NHS England, we saw increases of:

• 63% to 92% of staff reporting they were confident to design and deliver improvement projects
• 75% to 96% of staff reporting they have the skills to improve ward culture from within
• 69% to 93% of staff reporting they were confident to meaningfully involve people with lived experience

Interested in having a conversation about turning the learning in this paper into a practical next step for your organisation? 

Get in touch with Rachel Lewis and Harris Lorie at cultureofcare@thepsc.co.uk