Monthly archives: June 2018
Star Awards 2018: Distinguished Service Award
Do you know an individual or team who has worked above and beyond the call of duty in their service to the Trust.
This could be a current employee or someone who has left during the previous year.
Nominate them for the Distinguished Service Award in this year’s upcoming Star Awards!
If you nominate a colleague or team before 15 June you will be automatically entered into a prize draw to win a red letter day experience gift certificate.
Ways to nominate:
- You can complete a paper nomination form which you can download by clicking here.
- You can send in a video nomination for free to swbh.comms@nhs.net via www.wetransfer.com Choose go to free. When doing the recording remember to state clearly who you are and the name of the person/team you are nominating.
- You can complete the online form by clicking here.
If you have any questions, please contact the communications team on 0121 507 5303 or email swbh.comms@nhs.net.
For more information, please visit our dedicated Star Awards 2018 page on Connect.
Chief Executive’s Message – Friday 8 June
The focus on quality and safety of care was absolute at yesterday’s Board meeting. And the future integrated care model for our Trust was considered at yesterday’s Health and Wellbeing Board as well. In each case collaboration and shared learning are what will move us forward. That is what has led almost every part of medicine, and all of our community wards, to meet our shift by shift safety standards last week. Congratulations to Claire, Michelle, Chetan, Arvind, Kemal and the team. In our A&E departments we have also met, especially at Sandwell, the adult safety standards, whilst sustaining the standards in children’s EDs which I have praised here before. This is a fantastic achievement, in the face of a huge rise in emergency admissions (up over 8 percent) and major rota gaps too. This application and dedication across acute care teams now needs to meet our sepsis challenge, which, together with sorting out palliative care coding, is what will reduce first avoidable deaths and then relative mortality rates in our organisation.
Today we held the first special board meeting ever that was wholly devoted to acute care quality, and it was clear there that absent gains in sepsis identification and emergency care waiting times, we still fall short of our own definition of Good when we meet the CQC this autumn.
To sustain excellence we know we need the right workforce in place. We have made acute medical hires in recent days, and had training medical roles returned to use by Health Education England in A&E. If you follow Trust senior nurses on Twitter you can find myriad examples of great practice in Lyndon 5 or D15. We need decent IT, of which more later, and the right service configuration.
Next week we will formally confirm that the extant PFI for Midland Met arrangements will be ceased, and as we move towards finding a delivery partner for 2022, the Board has resolved to focus time too on a reconfiguration of some acute services in 2019 in order to help sustain care quality and aim for better seven day services on a multi professional basis.
Safety depends on resilience and reliability and I know we are all frustrated by unreliable WiFi and major access issues with technology. From the start of July my Friday message will be accompanied by statistics showing the prior week’s IT system performance, which you can compare to your own experience, as we strive to improve. A commercial IT partner will join us in the weeks ahead as we aim to build the skills and capability to do what is needed but what is hard. The recent travails of TSB and Visa illustrate that the NHS is not alone in digital struggle, nonetheless, we all want to get into work knowing our jobs can be done helped by technology, not dodging round it. Recent outreach IT walkabouts to proactively identify technology issues have helped I hope, and the single biggest theme from those trips was printing issues. The Board will receive details in four weeks’ time of what it will take to fix those printing issues, and have them stay fixed when we switch over to Unity later this year. We expect that to be in late October – a delay of a year which reflects your feedback and our lived experience of poor IT. By the time we go live we must be ready, and so must our infrastructure.
Massive congratulations to a whole series of Trust teams who have made the finals of national awards ceremonies. Our respiratory team were at the HSJ Value awards last night; they were nominated in the acute service redesign category for the Future Hospitals’ Project. Also last night, Raffaela Goodby was shortlisted for HR director of the year by the Healthcare People Management Association – they also shortlisted our work on recruitment in nursing. Meanwhile the Healthcare Finance Management Association, West Midlands branch did give us the innovation award for e-rostering, a recognition of the work the bank office team has done to improve our temporary staffing processes and therefore reduce agency spend.
Thinking of awards, the deadline is near for our own annual award nomination process. Our Star Awards categories have been in daily comms for weeks and the deadline for your many nominations is the end of June. So if you are bored of Brexit, or the group stages of the upcoming World Cup do not grab your attention, find a few moments and nominate that person or team whose work you have always admired.
And the board also green lighted our car park building programme… the search for a solvent construction firm starts soon. Having doubled car parking capacity at Rowley Regis last year, by the end of next year I would very much hope to see multi- storey car parks at both our acute hospital sites.
Lunchtime mobile massages available today at Sandwell
Lynne Tandy is offering ten minute mobile chair massages between the hours of 12pm-2pm for only £5.
Note: Massages, (including time slots) must be agreed with Lynne in advance.
For more information and to book, please contact lynnetandy.arbonne@gmail.com.
Diabetes study day for qualified nurses at City and Sandwell
As part of the Diabetes Inpatient Education Programme 2018, the Trust is hosting study days aimed at qualified general nurses looking at patient’s journey with diabetes from admission to discharge.
These study days will be hosted:
- Karen Harley Room diabetes centre, City Hospital: 4 July, 9am–4pm
- Education Centre, Clinical Skills 1, Sandwell Hospital: 24 July, 9am-4pm
For more information please contact wyn.burbridge@nhs.net or lynne.braycotton@nhs.net.
Dietitians Week: 4-8 June
8 June marks the last day of Dietitians Week (4-8 June), with this year’s theme being dietitians do prevention.
Each day we will focus on the different aspects of prevention.
Today’s focus is on healthy conversations and making every contact count: Dietitians don’t just discuss diet and nutrition when they do prevention. They discuss related issues that impact on health like exercise, smoking and social factors. Dietitians signpost people to where they can access further help for these non-dietary issues.
If you want more information for you or your team you can contact sandwell.dietetics1@nhs.net
Discounted Sandwell Leisure Trust memberships for colleagues
The Sandwell Leisure Trust have kindly offered Trust employees a 20 percent discounted membership on their ONE card membership at £22.80 per month (via direct debit) or £273.60 per year one off payment.
This gives you unlimited access to:
- 9 local leisure centres
- 10 swimming pools plus a hydrotherapy pool
- Over 350 group fitness classes per week
- 9 gyms including state of the art equipment, functional training and toning tables
- Sauna & steam rooms
- Diverse fitness programme catering for all ages and abilities
- Friendly and helpful staff
- A centre of excellence for disabilities
- Inclusive support and tailored advice from out expert gym team
For more information please contact amir.ali1@nhs.net.
Come along to our Star Awards clinics
Do you want to find out more about this year’s award categories or are you unsure how to write and submit your nomination?
Why not pop along to one of our Star Awards clinics!
· Friday 8 June – 12-2pm, main reception, Rowley
If you have any questions, please contact the communications team on 0121 507 5303 or email swbh.comms@nhs.net.
For more information, please visit our dedicated Star Awards 2018 page on Connect.
Lunchtime mobile massages available at Sandwell Hospital
Lynne Tandy is offering ten minute mobile chair massages between the hours of 12pm-2pm for only £5.
Note: Massages, (including time slots) must be agreed with Lynne in advance.
For more information and to book, please contact lynnetandy.arbonne@gmail.com.
SWBH Eastern European Staff Network
Are you a colleague who comes from Eastern Europe or do you have Eastern European Heritage?
We have recently launched a new staff network that is being set up to support you whilst you’re at work and to ensure that your voice is heard within our organisation.
If you would like to be a part of the network, attend our initial meetings or would like to find out more information about the network, please contact Estelle Hickman either on ext. 5035 or by email at swbh-gm-EqualityDiversity@nhs.net.
Audiology seeking volunteers for Cortical Evoked Response Audiometry
Our audiology department are setting up a new test called Cortical Evoked Response Audiometry (CERA) at City Hospital which they’re seeking between 10-20 volunteers of any age.
The test utilises an existing piece of kit (NavPro) that can measure brainwave activity in response to sound. The CERA test is used on adults that are unable to complete a routine hearing test or who are feigning a hearing loss for whatever reason.
The volunteer will have four electrodes placed on their head and small insert style earphones placed in the ear. They will then be asked to sit and read quietly whilst the test is completed. The test will take up to 1 hour to complete.
Deadline for volunteering is Friday 31 August.
To register your interest or for more information, please contact andrew.rutter@nhs.net or phil.ypres-smith@nhs.net.
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