Hospital staff are to be asked more often how they feel about where they work.

Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals NHS Trust is planning to introduce regular staff surveys to gauge people’s views about their job, colleagues, leadership and management, and health and safety.

They will be in addition to the annual nationalNHSstaff survey, which is carried out in October and November.

In a message to staff, chief executive Matthew Kershaw said although the national survey was important and useful and he urged the 850 randomly selected staff to take part to fill it out, it still had some limitations.

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He said: “It only happens once a year and even if 70% of our staff return their surveys (which is a very high return rate) that is still only just less than 600 people or 10% of our whole workforce.

“So we have plans to introduce our own, more regular staff surveys, to help gather more information about where staff want us to focus our efforts to improve working conditions and practices and, as a result, provide better care for patients.

“The plan is that everyone will have the opportunity to take part in quarterly staff surveys and that surveying more people more frequently will enable us to gain a detailed and current understanding of where people are at and better track if any changes we make are having a positive impact on staff morale.”