Hospice clinical workforce survey

To help recruit and retain staff, Farleigh hospice has used a creative approach to develop new roles and provide career progression

Every year, Hospice UK conducts a clinical workforce survey to help us all gain a better understanding of the clinical hospice workforce.

Learn more about the survey and how to submit your hospice's data.

What's on this page

The aim of the survey

The aim of the survey is to:

  • create a comprehensive picture of the hospice clinical workforce across the UK
  • provide comparative data for participating hospices to help local workforce planning.
Two hospice nurses working in a hospice

“We need this clinical workforce data to enable us to plan our future workforce. It will be useful to compare with other hospices and understand how we can continue to attract the experience we need for the future.”   

Laura Hugman, Clinical Team Manager, Paul Sartori Hospice

How to take part?

Which hospices need to complete the survey?

The clinical workforce survey is for all independent charitable hospices from all four nations of the UK. This includes adults and children's hospices (and hospices serving both). 

Marie Curie and Sue Ryder will submit data for their hospices via their Head Office.

NHS hospices (and NHS charities supporting NHS hospices) do not need to fill in the survey.

How will you tell us about the survey?

We will invite hospices to complete the survey via the National Clinical Leaders Group and Hospice Leaders Briefing.

About the data collection

The data collection focuses on understanding the workforce at your organisation on a given census date, as well as other important clinical workforce measures. 

Clinical leads will likely have to work with colleagues at their hospices including data analysts and HR teams to help them gather and input their data. The survey set-up form is designed to facilitate this.

Where it is possible, we provide comparative data between your hospice and other similar hospices that preserves anonymity (as shown below). This can help to support local workforce planning.

The clinical workforce measures include Comparative?
Nursing skill mix in community and/or inpatient and/or day hospice (outpatient) ✓
Establishment fill for nursing, allied health professionals and doctors. Vacancies in specific roles ✓
Age, ethnicity, religion, gender, sexual orientation, disability, carer status ✓
Turnover and stability indicators ✓
Length of time to recruit posts ✓
Staff sickness rates ✓
How hospices are interfacing with the NHS Agenda for change  
Types of staff benefits  
How hospices are supporting the development of clinical career  
Staff supervision and support  
Qualitative information about local innovations and developments in clinical workforce  

Additional measures provide further insights nationally and regionally. We also look to identify innovations and developments for clinical workforce to share widely.

A spreadsheet outlining all the survey questions is made available during the data collection period. You can use this to collate the required information in advance of starting the survey.

Working with Together for Short Lives

Our colleagues at Together for Short Lives (TFSL) are interested in understanding the clinical workforce in children’s hospices and providers of palliative and end of life care for children and young people.   

We work closely with TFSL and share much of the data from this annual survey with them to support their work. We ensure permissions are in place for any data-sharing before doing so.

Contact us

We are here to help and answer any questions.

Contact the team if you would like support

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