Introducing the Back to the Floor concept at the Royal Wolverhampton and Walsall Healthcare NHS Trusts

The concept of Back to the Floor (BTTF) has been in existence for many years and the approach is used by nursing and midwifery teams across a wide range of healthcare organisations in the UK. The aim of the approach is to improve patient experience through strengthened, visible, senior clinical leadership. The concept can support the aims and objectives of an organisational nursing, midwifery and allied health professions strategy, which in the case of The Royal Wolverhampton NHS Trust (RWT) and Walsall Healthcare NHS Trust (WHT), is the Quality Framework. RWT and WHT work closely as part of a collaborative model, whereby colleagues across both organisations work together to standardise approaches to health and care delivery as far as possible and nursing and midwifery is no exception to this.

Evaluations of the BTTF approach at other organisations (Thompson, 2009; Jones and Griffiths, 2011) have found that it has had a positive impact on staff and patients, for example, by improving senior team visibility, empowerment, learning together, professional networking, responding to problems collectively and effectively, strengthened communication and championing and implementing change effectively.