National Healthcare Uniform – Our Project Values

We recently announced the two preferred bidders for the National Healthcare Uniform project, we are now moving forwards with the next major stage of the project: The development of our four key workstreams.

These workstreams will support the delivery of the five core objectives set out in the original proposal. They in turn have acted as our five key values, steering all activity and enabling us to work together with trusts, suppliers and key stakeholders such as professional bodies and NHS England. These values ensure we remain true to the original goals, and most importantly give us a framework to help understand and subsequently meet, the needs of the NHS workforce.

Project values

The five core objectives which are the driving force behind this project are:

• Improving patient safety and understanding
• Maintaining and strengthening professional identity
• Developing an inclusive and adaptable range, suitable for the whole NHS workforce in England
• Enhanced ethical, sustainable, and socially responsible practices
• Ensuring value for money.

Introducing the project workstreams

Our four interconnected workstreams have now launched and the teams involved continue to move this project forwards with a specific focus on:

• Uniform Design – Focused on finalising the garment design specification and colourways: ensuring that every aspect of the uniform has been tested by end wearers. Working with trusts to ensure that the needs of all potential wearers have been considered, and making sure any feedback is included within the final approved design.
• Implementation and Adoption – Planning a suitable approach to the uniform rollout: communicating with trusts to establish a profile and develop a phased approach to the rollout of the new uniform design nationally, considering existing contract agreements and potentially complex requirements of all trusts.
• Sustainability – Working to map out the ethical, environmental and social impact of this uniform: ensuring that we consider the environmental and social impact of both the rollout of this uniform nationally and the development of robust end of product life processing, such as uniform recycling. 
• Technology – Integrating an end-to-end ordering system: working with NHS trusts to gain a picture of the typical ordering process and building an ordering system to meet this unique and potentially varied requirement and ensuring comprehensive testing is carried out ahead of the rollout process.

We will be sharing more over the coming months as our workstreams progress and are working hard to deliver the national healthcare uniform the NHS workforce deserves.