There are six core NHS values which guide the organisation and its workforce. These core values are; working together for patients, respect and dignity, commitment to quality of care, compassion, improving lives, and everyone counts. Everyone that works in the NHS is expected to display these values, whether you are a chief executive, paramedic, consultant, porter, or healthcare assistant.

Dictionary definition

• Cambridge Dictionary Definition of values

  The beliefs people have, especially about what is right and wrong and what is most important in life, that control their behaviour.

Everyone will have their own set of personal values. Have a think about what your own values are. The image below has some examples.

Job or university applicants are also expected to demonstrate their values in applications and interviews for healthcare professions. This is known as values-based recruitment.

Planning your NHS Values Interview Answers

Follow these links to watch videos explaining the values. You can also plan your answers to interview questions by using the action plan templates.

Improving Lives… focuses on improving the overall patients’ health and experience of the NHS rather than just focusing on an individual disease or problem.

Compassion... is ensuring that staff take the time to be kind, remembering that individual experiences with the NHS can be hard, traumatic and painful.

Working together for patients… is about putting the patients first and working as a team. That team includes not only the patient, but also their family, carers and other professionals.  

Respect & Dignity... Each person’s individuality is valued, as well as their priorities, needs, strengths and weaknesses. What people say in conversations with staff is taken seriously. 

Everyone Counts... The NHS seeks to help everyone, recognising that some people need more help than others and making sure no-one is excluded, discriminated against or left behind.

Commitment to quality of care... is providing the best care in terms of safety, effectiveness and patient experience and always striving to do better by seeking feedback.

It’s a good idea to start building a bank of examples of where you have demonstrated the NHS values. These will be crucial during the application process for courses and jobs.

•When have you worked with others to complete a challenging task?

•Give an example when you have helped to improve someone’s life through action or education.

•Define dignity and then tell me how you would give patients dignity in this NHS role.

•Describe a time when you provided treatment or care which focused on one of the six NHS values.

How the NHS values are embedded into recruitment

Involving patients and members of the public is a key part to any recruitment within the NHS – after all, these are the people that healthcare students and professionals are working with! 
For example, University of Huddersfield have previously set up workstations for patients to ask questions during candidate assessments. Similarly, Sheffield Hallam University have asked service users to write a script for videos to be played for candidates during an interview.

Potential healthcare students will be invited to have a 1:1 in-person (or video call) structured interview – This means that there will be a set of pre-written questions and a scoring criteria that will be the same for everyone. 
This interview might take place as part of another selection process: 
Multiple Mini Interviews (MMIs) – A series of independent stations that candidates go between to have a quick usually more specific interview – perhaps assessing one value each. 
Selection Centre – A space to complete a series of exercises such as roleplay activities and written workbooks 
Situational Judgement Test (SJT) - In an SJT, test-takers are presented with written or video-based demonstrations of invented scenarios and asked to identify an appropriate response from a series of options. 

Your next steps

Explore more of the value-based recruitment activities on our website and use the information and ideas you have just gathered to record your own values and where you demonstrate them. You can create personalised examples of each value to help you be interview ready.