DUDLEY hospitals have been named among the best places to work in the NHS - and the main health union agrees, despite recent job losses at the health trust.

Two leading industry publications - the Health Service Journal and Nursing Times - have identified the Dudley Group NHS Foundation Trust as one of the top 40 acute hospital trusts in the country that have worked hard to promote "great staff engagement" and to create an environment where people can enjoy what they do for a living.

Tony Rabaiotti, the Unison union's Birmingham and the Black Country team leader, said: "Both management and staff at Dudley have worked hard to improve staff relationships and it's bearing fruit at the moment.

"There's still going to be the odd issue and one of the live issues at the moment is the staff jobs that are going.

"But staff and management sides are able to talk to bring the number of redundancies down - it's all done through discussion.

"If you can get that relationship, the winners are not only the staff but the patients as well."

The 'Best Places to Work' list produced by Health Service Journal and Nursing Times is compiled using data from the annual NHS staff survey and looks at seven areas said to be "key to a happy workplace".

Yardsticks used are performance on leadership and planning, corporate culture and communication, role satisfaction, work environment, relationship with supervisors, training, development and resources, employee engagement and satisfaction.

Paula Clark, chief executive of the Dudley group, said: “We’re absolutely thrilled to hear that we’ve been named as one of the very best employers in the whole of the NHS.

“Our staff truly are our most valuable asset and we’ve worked really hard over the past year to make sure our workforce know how important they are to the organisation.

“Thanks to our hard working and motivated staff, we are one of the top performing trusts in the country, so it’s more important than ever that our staff know how much we appreciate their commitment and dedication.”

The Dudley group, which runs Russells Hall Hospital and the Corbett and Dudley Guest outpatient centres in Stourbridge and Dudley, was £6.4 million in the red last year.

A combination of not filling vacant positions, voluntary redundancies and redeployment of staff has helped to cut the workforce by more than 200. Ms Clark recently told the News the cuts left just 15 to go under compulsory redundancy.

She also revealed that, after making stringent efforts to get a grip on finances, trust bosses now predicted a shortfall of £3.5 million for 2015/16 , putting them on course to get back into the black next year.