Today, (April 26), the new National Healthcare Estates & Facilities Day has topped a new milestone - the number of organisations registered to support the day now gives the event a reach of 100,000 staff - just a few more to go and it will have achieved engagement with 50% of the NHS EFM workforce.
This new national awareness day has been launched to recognise and celebrate the essential work of estates and facilities (E&F) staff across the health service. If you’ve got some plans for how you will celebrate this day within your own organisations and wider communities please do share them, via the website: www.healthcareEFMDay.org. This not only enables all of the organisations who are supporting this event (full list at the end of this story) to promote your ideas and plans across their own networks, but will provide ideas for other Trusts or healthcare teams considering signing up to the event.
The work of the directly patient-facing workforce in hospitals and care settings would be impossible without the army of E&F professionals underpinning them. This awareness day is a great opportunity to shout about this vital contribution, to enhance the public perception of these essential roles and attract wider media attention to ensure E&F staff are more highly valued in their work environments. In raising the awareness of these roles, National Healthcare Estates & Facilities Day also has the potential to attract more young people into healthcare E&F as a career choice.
Although the response has been incredible, there are still more organisations that have yet to engage with the National Healthcare Estates and Facilities Day. If you are reading this and you haven’t yet registered, please head to the website: www.healthcareEFMDay.org to do so. If you have already registered, please encourage your colleagues in other Trusts or teams to join everyone in this initiative to celebrate E&F staff and the work they do. A free supporters kit is available on the website to download and there is also a video that you can share across your own social media to help to raise awareness of the many essential services and activities that E&F teams are responsible for.
National Healthcare Estates & Facilities Day is supported by HEFMA and other professional organisations representing the E&F workforce: Association for Healthcare Cleaning Professionals, Hospital Caterers Association, Institute of Decontamination Sciences, Institute of Healthcare Engineering and Estate Management, Society of Hospital Linen Services and Laundry Managers and National Association of Healthcare Fire Officers. The day also has the support of the professional E&F leads in the four national NHS bodies, as well as commercial partners and the wider supply chain. This list is by no means exclusive, and other partners who share an interest in promoting the work of E&F staff in healthcare across the UK will be welcomed to help celebrate this special day.
The inaugural National Healthcare Estates & Facilities Day will be held on June 15, 2022 (and annually thereafter on the third Wednesday in June).
