Our staff are here to care

Everyone has the right to be treated with compassion and respect, free from violence, harassment, or abuse.

Yet across our hospital sites, many colleagues face these challenges every day.

Please act with kindness

As part of our new Trust Strategy, we are committed to tackling harmful behaviours, promoting psychological safety, and embedding learning from incidents.

We have developed a new trauma-informed campaign aimed at reducing and preventing violence and abuse against our colleagues.

The campaign is closely linked to the Sussex Trauma Informed Framework and aims to remind patients and visitors to act with kindness and treat our staff with respect.

This means when visiting our hospitals, visitors will clearly see our message that we will not accept violence, abuse, threats or harassment of any kind. 

We encourage our colleagues to report any instances and will support them should they be the victim of such behaviour and pursue convictions wherever possible.

As well as the visual aspect of the campaign, we have also implemented several initiatives to help protect our staff, patients and visitors. These include:

• Rolling out bespoke conflict management training to strengthen confidence and de-escalation skills for colleagues.
• Improving crime reporting support so incidents are captured and followed through with Sussex Police.
• Implementing security measures, including knife amnesty bins and body-worn cameras can deter aggressive behaviours before they escalate. 
• Launching an accessible toolkit with updated procedures and guidance on reporting violence and abuse aimed at managers.  

For staff:

If you have experienced violence, abuse, threats or harassment of any kind, there are a number of ways you can report instances and receive the right support for you.

We encourage you to raise issues as soon as you feel able to. You will be listened to with compassion and provided with support to feel confident and safe to talk about what has happened.

We’re asking patients, visitors, and the wider community to join us in this commitment – to please act with kindness because together, we can make our hospitals safe for everyone.