Today is NHS Change Day. And this year UNISON has added our backing to this innovative campaign. The aims behind Change Day underpin many of UNISON’s own campaigning: our work around patient safety and the need to flag up unsafe staffing levels; the importance of team work and our Worth it campaign – highlighting the value of the work done by all NHS staff.
Change Day is open to staff, patients and the wider community to get involved. The NHS has come in for a real battering from this government, so it is important to get people thinking in a positive way about our health service and what we can all do to make it even better.
UNISON members have a wealth of experience and expertise as NHS workers that they can use to devise their own pledges.
Our Be Safe campaign already calls on members to flag up concerns about poor or unsafe staffing levels. And that means not just nurses or healthcare assistants on wards, but the cleaners, the caterers, admin staff, porters – so many staff who see what is happening should feel able to speak out if what they see worries them.
That is why the One Team campaign is so important. We need to encourage employers, politicians and the public to understand the importance of the single team approach and put an end to the use of terms like ‘‘frontline” and “back-office”.
Staff in the NHS are used to change. All too often under this government it has been change for the worse in the form of top down reorganisations and privatisation.
But NHS Change Day is different – it is for staff to have their say. The campaign has an ambitious target of half a million pledges this year: let’s pledge to make that happen.