We are one of the largest hospital trusts in England, with five hospitals and community clinics serving a local population of around 695,000 people. We also provide some specialist services for a wider population, including renal services in Medway and Maidstone and a cardiac service for all of Kent based at William Harvey Hospital, Ashford.
Our vision is 'great healthcare from great people'. Everything we do is guided by our vision and values.
We have a national and international reputation for delivering high quality specialist care, particularly in urology, kidney disease, and vascular services.
We value and pursue excellence in research and innovation. Our Trust has been ranked first in Kent for clinical research studies, as well as consistently recruiting high numbers of patients into research trials. As a teaching Trust we play a vital role in the education and training of doctors, nurses and other healthcare professionals, working closely with local universities and Kings College University in London.
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Our 'We care' philosophy
What is ‘We care’?
‘We care’ is how we’re working to give great care to every patient, every day. It’s about being clear about what we want to focus on and why, and supporting staff to make real improvements, by training, coaching and everyone using one, standard method to make positive changes.
We know that frontline staff are best placed to know what needs to change. We’ve seen real success in East Kent Hospitals through initiatives like ‘Listening into Action’, ‘We said, we did’, and ‘I can’.
‘We care’ is a bigger version of this – it’s the new philosophy and new way of working for East Kent Hospitals. It’s about empowering frontline staff to lead improvements day-to-day. It’s a key part of our improvement journey – it’s how we’re going to achieve our vision of great healthcare from great people for every patient, every time.
For ‘We care’ to be effective, we need to be clear about what we are going to focus on – too many projects will dilute our efforts.
For the next five years, our strategic focus fits five themes: our patients, our people, our future, our sustainability and our quality and safety. To turn these True North Domains into real improvements, we’re focusing on five key objectives that contribute to these themes for the next year:
- Reducing falls to reduce harm to patients
- Reducing healthcare-acquired infections to reduce harm to patients
- Reducing deaths from sepsis and respiratory failure
- Improving theatre capacity to reduce patient waits
- Reducing patient time in ED once there has been a decision to admit.
We have chosen these five objectives using data to see where we can make the most significant improvements by focusing our efforts. We’ll also use data to measure how much we’re making a difference.
Frontline teams will lead making improvements in these areas of focus. They will be supported by our Improvement Office, which will help give teams the training and tools they need, and our Executive Directors will set the focus and coach leaders in how to support change. Our corporate teams will work with frontline teams to tackle organisation-wide improvements.
We recognise that this change in the way we work together means changing our behaviour and the way we do things. We will develop all leaders – from executive directors to ward managers - to be coaches, not ‘fixers’. We will live our Trust values in the way we work together, and involve patients in our improvement journey.
Get in touch
Main switchboard: 01227 766877
If you do not know which department to ask for, please ask for the operator and one of our switchboard operators will be happy to help you.
You can also write to the Trust:
East Kent Hospitals University NHS Foundation Trust Headquarters
Kent and Canterbury Hospital
Ethelbert Road
Canterbury
Kent, CT1 3NG
