CEO: Staff suffering ‘moral injury’ from poor estates

Staff are suffering “moral injury” as deteriorating estates disrupt their ability to provide care, a chief executive whose hospital rebuild has been delayed has warned.

Thom Lafferty said Princess Alexandra Hospital Trust needed around £120m to fix its basic infrastructure – far outstripping normal capital allocations.

The CEO, who joined in November, said: “Our staff cannot provide the level of care that they wish to because of the deteriorating estate which causes moral injury.” 

He said: “If something is mission critical safety, then we would have access to other resources to fix it. What we don’t have is the ability to guard against that level of operational disruption, which ends up providing a poor service for our patients and also causes moral injury to staff.”

Moral injury is persistent psychological distress from acting against your ethical code, according to NHS Confederation.

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Source: HSJ, 24 March 2025