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Monthly archives: January 2018

General Waste and Recycling Update

 

All of the Trust general waste is sent off site where it is separated for recycling or reprocessing (none is sent to landfill).

Please place all general waste into the bins provided – these are for domestic waste (e.g. food, paper, plastic food containers, etc.) It is important that no clinical waste goes into the general waste stream. 

For more information, contact Fran Silcocks, Sustainability Officer, email: francesca.silcocks@nhs.net

Free healthy lunch for cyclists and walkers

 

During January, we are offering colleagues a free healthy lunch voucher when you ditch the car as part of our ‘Get Active, Eat Free’ campaign. Join us for five of our lunchtime walks or cycle a return journey to work five times and get a FREE healthy meal (value up to £3).

For more information on lunchtime walks, contact Jenny Wright on jenny.wright9@nhs.net and for information on cycling, contact Fran Silcocks on Francesca.silcocks@nhs.net or visit https://connect2.swbh.nhs.uk/estates/sustainability/cycling/

*T’s and C’s apply (one lunch per person).

NHSSC Code Changes

 

The codes for ordering vaginal speculums (standard thread and nut) have changed due to a new contract being awarded to another supplier. From Monday 8 January 2018 the new codes will be :

Current Codes  – Description – New Codes

FGR186, FGR474: Vaginal Spec with nut and threaded runner, sterile single use Small  FGR748   (box of 100)

FGR187, FGR191, FGR475, FGR741: Vaginal Spec with nut and threaded runner, sterile single use Medium FGR675  (box of 100)

FGR193, FGR476: Vaginal spec with nut and threaded runner, sterile single use Large FGR747  (box of 100)

All materially managed wards and departments will automatically start receiving the new brand from 8 January 2018.

If you have any queries concerning the above, please do not hesitate to contact ext 4938 or any of the below procurement members of staff.

  • Debbie Chetwynd (SGH) – ext 2823
  • Gurprit Galsinh (SGH) – ext 2824
  • Becky Vanes (SGH) – ext 2689
  • Peter Lowe – ext 4699
  • Mark Shervington – ext 4937
  • Jackie Graham – ext 4939

Cardiology Grand Round – ACS: The commonest referral

 

A Grand Round will be taking place on Monday 8 January from 12.30pm (12pm lunch).  The Grand Round will focus on ACS: The commonest referral to cardiology – a cased based discussion, Presenter Polyvios Demetriades (Cardiology SpR), Supervisor Dr Leong Lee.  This will be repeated at Sandwell on Thursday 18 January.

Recruitment Office Changes

 

The Recruitment Department are pleased to announce that Michelle Jarrott has been appointed  to  the role of  Recruitment Office Manager.

Please list michelle.jarrott@nhs.net as the Recruitment Manager when you are submitting vacancy approvals on NHS Jobs.

We are currently reviewing the allocation of the roles within the Recruitment Department and will circulate these once finalised

In the meantime if you have any queries relating to  recruitment please email contact the recruitment office on 0121 507 5070, alternatively email  the team at swb-tr.SWBH-Team-Recruitment@nhs.net

 STOP!…Please do not throw away your old Christmas Cards…we will recycle them!

 

The Courtyard Centre at Sandwell Hospital would welcome your old Christmas cards.

Please drop off to The Courtyard Centre, front reception (near the Bryan Knight Suite), Sandwell Hospital or to the Estates Department, City Hospital.

Thanks to everyone who donated cards last year, and to champion ‘Handy Crafters for Cancer’, Cynthia and Betty, who made and sold 500 Christmas cards again in 2017, raising yet another £250.00 for our local cancer trust fund.

Any queries regarding drop off points can be directed to Emma Hunstone Cancer Support Manager on extension 3817 or via the Courtyard Centre on extension 3792.

Infection Prevention advice for managing Flu

 

It is flu season so think about flu in anyone with a respiratory illness, especially if they have one or more of:

  • Fever > 38°C
  • Headache
  • Sore throat
  • Muscle & joint pain
  • Cough

People are infectious while they are symptomatic so isolate anyone in whom flu is suspected or confirmed, where clinically appropriate your first course of action should be to send people home:

  • In a silver side room (or if in a bronze side room they must have their own designated commode)
  • Hand hygiene: Wash hands with soap & water.
  • Personal Protective Equipment (PPE)- wear gloves & aprons, fluid repellent surgical mask when working in close contact (approx 1 m)
    • FFP3 masks should be worn (by staff who have undergone fit testing) during aerosol generating procedures e.g. intubation, NIV
  • The patient should wear a surgical mask until isolated
  • Advise on coughing & sneezing hygiene – dispose of tissues as clinical waste

Take throat swabs for PCR testing from suspected cases

Treatment with oseltamivir (Tamiflu) is only effective if started within 48h of symptoms

Patient contacts of confirmed cases should be offered prophylaxis but should NOT be swabbed unless symptomatic

Further information is available on the intranet
https://connect2.swbh.nhs.uk/infection-prevention-control/key-organisms/influenza/

New Year’s message from Chief Executive Toby Lewis

 

Dear colleague,

A new year starts and I wanted to take the opportunity to share a few ideas with you about our future.  The NHS, and our social care partners, are under strain.  We are not immune from those pressures.  But we have a distinctive and a great chance to improve further what we do, and working ever more closely with general practice and community pharmacy partners, that is a chance that I hope that we take.  2018 is the year to make sense of our move into Midland Met in the middle of 2019, and everything we do now is intended to build our 2020 model of care now, in readiness to succeed.  We have a once in a generation opportunity.  We need to seize it.

We continue to need to work to make our IT work better.  It ought to be something we do not need to talk about at all.  It should just be assumed that we can print as we need, order and view and approve results easily, and see one patient record simply.  You know we are working with out of date infrastructure, though that is changing week by week.  In the spring we will put in our Cerner EPR, Unity, and rely far more on cloud based storage.  You may have seen small yellow stickers on walls on our acute sites – marking the spot where new computers will arrive in February.  Before we go live with the new systems, we have a lot of training to do.  Not just in how to use the system itself, but in how we are changing care pathways to map to the system – fewer bespoke care plans in nursing for example, or new results acknowledgement arrangements for tests to make sure no patient falls through gaps.  This work will dominate our lives in the next six months.  But the benefit should be obvious, and nowhere more so than in introducing electronic prescribing, replacing paper drug charts, which sometimes move between wards and pharmacy, and giving us a chance to cut medication errors for our patients.

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