The NHS logo is recognised by almost everyone in the UK. Since being introduced in 1999, the NHS logo has become one of the most nationally recognised brands signifying trustworthy, accessible healthcare for all. The NHS identity is important because patients need to perceive the NHS as a unified service they can rely on anywhere in the country. Consistent NHS branding ensures patients can recognise services and staff. Lanyards can play an important role in helping make staff and departments identifiable.
Why NHS Lanyards Are Essential Uniform
In a healthcare setting, lanyards are more than just an accessory, they’re a core part of the uniform. NHS lanyards provide assurance. When a patient sees a staff member wearing a lanyard displaying the NHS logo, it establishes trust.
Whether you’re a busy A&E nurse or a doctor on a home visit, having a lanyard with a prominent NHS logo displayed helps patients feel secure. When patients may feel vulnerable and frightened, a lanyard gives them the confidence that they are in the hands of a trusted healthcare professional.
With so many branches of the NHS, there are plenty of applications across multiple facilities.
Hospital Staff Lanyards
Hospitals employ hundreds, sometimes thousands of staff members across multiple departments. This can make keeping track of team members difficult. Hospitals may need to quickly identify staff in the following roles:
- Administrative team
- Surgery departments
- Radiology
- A&E
- Nursing staff
- Trainees and medical students
Our custom lanyards can be designed to make differentiation of various staff roles simple.
GP Surgeries and Health Centres
Smaller healthcare settings may have less staff, but the needs for easy identification remain the same. GPs are often the first port of call when people feel unwell, and receptionists are on the front line as the first people patients encounter.
GP surgeries may need to differentiate staff in the following roles:
- GPs
- Receptionists
- Practice Nurses
- Chaperones
- Locum practitioners or cover staff
- Mental health staff
- Physiotherapists
- Practice managers
- Pharmacists
With lots of staff working together in a much smaller environment, colour coded NHS lanyards help patients determine that they’re talking to the right person.
Other Applications for NHS Lanyards
- Teaching hospitals needing to differentiate between patients, lecturers and students.
- Ambulance services and paramedic teams (often use the dark green ambulance colours)
- In-community practitioners visiting patients in off-site locations like pop-up clinics or at home
- Third-party providers such as NHS dental practices.
Security and Safeguarding
Beyond identification, NHS lanyards also serve a practical purpose for security and safeguarding patients. Using lanyard attachments, staff can display identification cards, helping to keep vulnerable patients safe by restricting access to only legitimate members of staff.
Making lanyards part of the mandatory uniform makes it easier to spot individuals without proper identification, prompting staff to challenge anyone without identification. Encouraging security culture protects vulnerable patients whilst maintaining trustworthiness in staff.
LGBT+ Inclusion and Rainbow Lanyards
The NHS Rainbow Badge initiative has gained wider popularity in recent years. Staff wearing the rainbow pin show that they’ve undertaken equality training, recognising that LGBT+ patients face difficulties in obtaining healthcare. The rainbow badge scheme signals to LGBT+ patients that the person they are speaking to has been trained to understand their unique healthcare needs. It offers reassurance that they will be treated with empathy and support.
This can be taken a step further by offering staff members under the Rainbow Badge scheme a matching rainbow pattern custom lanyard to make them more identifiable, helping LGBT+ patients access healthcare without stigma.
Practical Considerations for NHS Lanyards
The NHS provides strict branding guidelines for lanyards, including colour and organisational logo use. You can see examples of NHS lanyards on their website. When designing your custom lanyard with us, you can use our personalised lanyard design tool to ensure your lanyards comply with your specifications.
Some other factors to keep in mind include:
- Safety breaks – these are a standard on NHS lanyards to ensure they release if grabbed. This is important when dealing with distressed and potentially disruptive patients. To further protect NHS staff, we supply our standard NHS lanyards with a double safety break system, meaning they require less force before breaking off.
- Durability – lanyards will face daily use and frequent cleaning over the course of long shifts. We recommend a quality printing method such as dye sublimation or screen printing. Dye sublimation offers a wider range of colours, but screen printing looks best for simple logos with a few colours. Which one you chose will depend on your needs.
- Badge holders and retractable reels – these allow staff to attach items such as ID cards or keys to their lanyard. In healthcare environments, staff may have touchless door opening tools they want to carry with them to prevent infection. Supplying your lanyards with clip attachments allows staff to keep tools they need regularly on hand.
Badge holders and retractable reels – these allow staff to attach items such as ID cards or keys to their lanyard. In healthcare environments, staff may have touchless door opening tools they want to carry with them to prevent infection. Supplying your lanyards with clip attachments allows staff to keep tools they need regularly on hand.
More Than Just Identification
NHS lanyards represent professionalism and the trust we place in our frontline workers. When patients see a member of staff wearing an NHS lanyard, they see trusted, hardworking professionals. Custom lanyard design helps your healthcare facility to stand out without compromising the nationally recognised NHS identity.
For help designing your lanyard, our team are on hand to offer support at every step of the way!
Choosing the Right Printing Method
We recommend dye sublimation for custom printed NHS or healthcare lanyards. By using dye sublimation, we can replicate complex designs easily with no limit on the number of colours. As the dye is directly impregnated into the fabric, we can print on both sides of the fabric simultaneously. There’s also no risk of the print cracking, so one lanyard will last a student their whole school career (provided they don’t lose it somewhere).
We also offer screen printing which may be more suitable for bold and simple logos or if you need precise colour matching. Which one is best for your school depends on several factors; you can learn more about dye sublimation vs screen printing on our guide to help you make your decision.
Get in touch or start designing today!