Fewer than a third of registered nurses and midwives at Sandwell and West Birmingham Hospitals and the Dudley Group who responded to the survey feel their work is valued by their employer.
At just 33.1%, the trusts’ score is the joint lowest in the whole of the West Midlands, excluding the ambulance service and NHS commissioning bodies.
Sandwell and West Birmingham’s performance against this measure tumbled by 8.8 percentage points, the largest drop of any general hospital trust in the region, while Dudley’s fell by 5.1.
The proportions of registered nursing and midwifery staff feeling valued at the Royal Wolverhampton and Walsall Healthcare trusts – the other two organisations in the Black Country Provider Collaborative – also fell markedly.
Wolverhampton’s score deteriorated to 34.8% from 41.5% in 2024 and Walsall’s dipped to 38.4% from 44.9%.
In 2025, the four trusts cut pay rates for bank shifts to the base point of each NHS pay band, leaving experienced staff on a higher point of their band who do extra hours at least £40 a shift worse off compared to their regular pay.
Poorest performing
The four trusts were also among the poorest performing in the survey question that asked staff if they would recommend their organisation as a place to work.
Among registered nurses and midwives, the rate of decline at Sandwell and West Birmingham was the largest of all hospital providers in the region, falling from 62.2% in 2024 to 47.5% - down a hefty 14.7 percentage points. Elsewhere:
- Wolverhampton’s score fell by 13.5 percentage points to 46.2%, the lowest score of any provider trust in the West Midlands
- Dudley Group’s score was 52.8%, down from 59% in 2024
- Walsall’s score was 54.4%, down from 60.9% in 2024
Each of the trusts also saw a downturn in the proportion of registered nurses and midwives who said they would be happy with the standard of care provided by their trust if a friend or relative needed treatment. At both Sandwell and West Birmingham and Wolverhampton, fewer than half of the respondents said they would be happy. This represents drops in performance of 11.9 and 10.4 percentage points respectively.
'Worth'
Sarah Dodsworth, RCN Regional Director in the West Midlands, said: “These results back up our own recent survey findings that if you don’t pay staff what they’re worth for the hours they put in over and above their working week, they don’t feel valued and they won’t feel their organisation is a good one to work for.
“The NHS Staff Survey results show that the sense of feeling valued is lower among registered nursing and midwifery staff than the all-staff average in every NHS trust in the region.
“However, the scores against this measure in the Black Country hospital trusts have nosedived. These employers should be asking themselves why this is and, why, at some other hospitals down the road, performance has actually improved and more staff are feeling valued.
“If they’re serious about helping their nursing staff to feel valued, they need to reverse their unfair cuts to bank pay rates. They are short-changing the experience and expertise of dedicated, hard-working staff who step up to fill vacant shifts.”
