PATIENTS visiting community hospitals in Worcestershire will now be able to see up-to-date information on the amount of nurses working that day as soon as they arrive.

Worcestershire Health and Care NHS Trust, which runs the majority of non-emergency medical services in the county, has introduced a new system in which staffing levels are displayed on screens in each ward.

The screens show how many nurses are working on each ward along with how many should be on duty to keep the service running effectively, as well as visiting hours and infection control measures.

The system, dubbed i-safe, has been introduced following new NHS rules introduced in April last year requiring all trusts to publish their actual staffing levels compared with the planned amount of nurses.

The trust’s deputy director of nursing Vicky Preece said: “Safe staffing levels are at the cornerstone of providing high quality care and we are committed to providing reassurance to our patients that our staffing levels are sufficient to deliver a high standard of care.

“We use the i-safe system to allow senior nursing staff to monitor staffing levels on a daily basis, to ensure all nursing shifts are filled and to take appropriate actions where there are deficits through staff sickness of vacancies.”

Up-to-date staffing information is also available at www.hacw.nhs.uk/our-services/safer-staffing.