Monthly archives: June 2018
Star Awards 2018: 2020 vision prize for integrated care pioneer of the year
Do you know an individual or team who has demonstrated integrated care, either by working in partnership with local healthcare / social care / voluntary services, or in their daily work to ensure that their patients “can plan my care with people who work together to understand me and my carer(s), allow me control, and bring together services to achieve the outcomes important to me”
Nominate them for the 2020 vision prize for integrated care pioneer of the year!
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.
Child safety week: 4-10 June
This week is child safety week.
Child safety weeks aims to help families make the unknown known and to understand risks as well as consequences but more importantly, the simple ways that accidents can be prevented.
As many of us as professionals care for children and young people is vital to know this information.
With this in mind, please see useful documents listed below:
Please visit the website for more information about child safety week.
Gypsy, Roma and Traveller Month
June is Gypsy, Roma and Traveller month.
The population we deliver care to across the Trust have a number of Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities within them.
During the last census some 500 traveling families were identified as living in the area to access our health care provision.
This minority group within the general population experience a high level of prejudice and discrimination.
As such, we wanted to highlight some of the health care inequalities this group experience.
- Studies show that Gypsy and Traveller women live 12 years less than women in the general population and men 10 years less, although recent research suggests the life expectancy gap could be much more
- Research also shows that the health of Gypsies and Travellers starts to deteriorate markedly when individuals are over 50
- 39 percent of Gypsies and Travellers have a long-term illness compared with 29 percent of age and sex matched comparators, even after controlling for socioeconomic status and other marginalised groups
- Travellers are three times more likely to have chronic cough or bronchitis, even after smoking is taken into account
- 22 percent of Gypsies and Travellers reported having asthma and 34% reported chest pain compared to 5 percent and 22 percent of the general population
- Gypsies and Travellers are nearly three times more likely to be anxious than average and just over twice as likely to be depressed
- Irish Travellers are three times as likely to die by suicide than the general population
- There is an excess prevalence of miscarriages, stillbirths and neonatal deaths in Gypsy and Traveller communities and high rates of maternal death during pregnancy and shortly after childbirth
- A high prevalence of diabetes has been reported in Gypsy and Traveller communities, and a lack of community knowledge of the risk factors.
There is a support service for this community that is facilitated by Rights and Equality Sandwell and Sandwell Council, who work in partnership the Sandwell CCG. The best route for colleagues to direct members of this community for support is to contact the Sandwell Independent Living Centre, 100 Oldbury Road, Smethwick, B66 1JE. They can also be called on 0121 569 5099.
New sapphire infusion pumps for epidurals from 6 June
From today (Wednesday 6 June), there will be a roll out of the new Sapphire infusion pump for epidurals at both our City and Sandwell sites.
Note: The pump is already currently in use across maternity.
Training has been taking place across the both sites on the appropriate wards/theatres and there will be support from the icumedical rep during the week.
There is also an e-learning package that will be available at a later date.
For more information please contact andrew.atkinson@nhs.net.
Star Awards 2018: Nominate to be in a chance to win a red letter day experience
Do you know a team or individual who deserve to be recognised?
Why not nominate them for a Star Award to recognise their outstanding commitment to our organisation!
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.
Mark Johnson – funeral arrangements
Trust member, Mark Johnson sadly passed away in May.
The funeral will be taking place on Wednesday 6 June, 12pm, at Streetly Crematorium with the service moving on to Great Barr Golf Club afterwards.
Volunteers’ Week: Drop by to see us throughout the week
Friday 1 June saw Volunteers’ Week commence across the UK.
Volunteers’ Week is a long-standing, popular event in the voluntary sector, established in 1984.
It is supported and celebrated by small grassroots organisations as well as larger, household-name charities, who together run hundreds of events across the UK.
As part of Volunteers’ Week, our volunteer service will be hosting a variety stalls across our sites to raising awareness of volunteering, with opportunities available to join the service and become a volunteer.
The volunteer service will be at the following locations throughout the week:
- Tuesday 5 June: Rowley Regis hospital – main reception
- Wednesday 6 June: City hospital – Birmingham Treatment Centre, 1st floor
For more information please contact swbh.volunteer@nhs.net.
National Dementia Audit
We’re encouraging all colleagues working with adult inpatients with memory problems or dementia to complete the National Dementia Audit.
The audit aims to highlight areas of good practice and identify areas for improvement which will lead to better care for people with dementia in general hospitals.
The audit officially opened yesterday and can be accessed here.
For more information about the audit, please check out the Dementia Action Week slides or contact amelia.hilton@nhs.net.
Understanding employee wellbeing with young people: survey
The University of Birmingham are conducting a survey to increase understanding of Trust colleagues thoughts and feelings towards working with young people, both in a professional and personal capacity.
The research findings will contribute towards the training and support provided to staff at the Trust.
The survey should take no more than 10 minutes.
Click here to complete the survey.
Message from Rachel Barlow, Chief Operating Officer and David Carruthers, Medical Director: Internal IT Incident update
Dear Colleagues
It’s been a challenging week for many clinical teams at the Sandwell site with the IT infrastructure impacting on the availability of PCs, phones and clinical devices such as pathology. We want to again thank all our clinical, operational and IT staff who have worked hard to sustain clinical services. We have made significant progress in terms of restoring IT service provision in the last 24 hours.
Pathology:
- Biochemistry is now working normally and the backlog of routine OP and GP samples is resolved.
- Haematology is processing routine samples normally.
- The current process to upload results to the computer system remains manual (with electronic viewing available to clinical teams). We hope to resolve this in the next 24 hours and return to an automated not transcribed results service.
- The pathology team have worked incredibly hard to catch up on the routine backlogs so well done!
Rebooking cancelled patients
- The elective surgical patients that we regrettably cancelled for safety reasons on Wednesday have all been rebooked for their treatment.
- The rebooking of patients who had outpatients and diagnostics cancelled is more than 90% complete with less than 10 patients to be booked on Monday.
Localised PC and phone issues
- The localised user experience issues with regards to use of PCs and VOIP phones has been resolved in the main block and the IT team are visiting areas now to confirm that impact.
- OP reception, elective access and pharmacy computers and phones are also fully restored.
We mobilised an Informatics Outreach team to clinical areas on the Sandwell site today, with operational and clinical leaders, to assess with staff locally their IT issues. We have collected 113 issues; 41% were device issues, 17% printing related and 7% reported non-working VOIP phones. There were a number of other issues not related to the incident this week but are making it harder than need be to work efficiently in clinical areas.
The issues we collected from the outreach process identified many more issues than we have recorded on the helpdesk. We will continue to review the IT service provision and experiences at Sandwell over the weekend and twice daily next week, to ensure we make those necessary improvements and ensure resilience of the IT infrastructure. We will provide ward and departmental managers feedback by next Friday as to the progress against each item raised.
We will use this experience to review how we best work between informatics and clinical services going forward. Please work with us to report issues through the IT helpdesk (extension 4050) which we will review daily.
Thank you for your patience and resilience. Have a great weekend.
Best wishes
Rachel Barlow, Chief Operating Officer
David Carruthers, Medical Director
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