Monthly archives: October 2018

Just two weeks remaining to get your flu vaccine

At the end of week four of our ‘may the four be with you campaign’ 60 per cent of our patient facing staff have received their four shields of protection against the dark side, which is fantastic.

With only two weeks remaining to get protected, please ensure you make time to have your vaccine this week. There are still a number of drop in clinics taking place at City and Sandwell Hospital and the FluMobile will be continuing its tour of our community locations.

Listen to Medical Director, David Carruthers explain why it is important that we achieve our target of 80 per cent.

If you haven’t had your flu jab yet, you can vaccinated at:

Sandwell Hospital:

• Tuesday-Thursday, main reception, 8.30am-12pm
• Friday, courtyard gardens, 1pm-4pm

City Hospital:

• Tuesday-Thursday, old foot health clinic by main reception, 8.30am-12pm
• Friday, old foot health clinic by main reception, 1pm-4pm

Rowley:

• Ask for availability of flu vaccinators at main reception

If you are unable to attend one of the drop in sessions, please contact occupational health on extension 3306.

Last week, the media reported that the flu vaccine contained gelatin; to confirm, the adult flu vaccination does not contain any pork derivatives or gelatine substances, it is however contained in the nasal flu vaccination given to children.

Listen to Community Nurse, Lyndsey Pearson discuss this in her video message below:

https://youtu.be/nY4P8hT5V7U

Are you in the draw yet – flu campaign

Did you know that once you have had your flu jab, you will be automatically entered into a draw to win some fantastic prizes?

If you have already had your vaccine – congratulations – your name is already in the draw. If you are yet to get protected – what are you waiting for?

Have your vaccines before 11 November to be in with a chance to win one of the following:

• £300 love2shop vouchers
• Google Home
• 1 extra annual leave day
• Amazon Fire Stick

If you have had your vaccine elsewhere, not only can you still count towards our target of 80 per cent, but you can also be entered into our prize draw. Please complete the form on Connect to let us know you have had your vaccination.

One name already in the draw is our Director of People and OD, Raffaela Goodby. She has her vaccine every year and today she explains why it is so important to her and her family.

If you haven’t had your flu jab yet, you can vaccinated at:

Sandwell Hospital:

• Tuesday-Thursday, main reception, 8.30am-12pm
• Friday, courtyard gardens, 1pm-4pm

City Hospital:

• Tuesday-Thursday, old foot health clinic by main reception, 8.30am-12pm
• Friday, old foot health clinic by main reception, 1pm-4pm

Rowley:

• Ask for availability of flu vaccinators at main reception

Note: The flu vaccine does not contain any pork or meat product or derivatives.

Star Awards – Employee of the Year

Our annual Star Awards took place on Friday 12 October, with over 350 colleagues in attendance. It was a fantastic evening, celebrating everything that is good about our organisation.

This years’s employee of the year award was won by Debi Fretwell, Matron.

Debi joined our organisation in 1993 as a staff nurse in medicine and emergency care. She has worked her way up and is now a matron within the same group.

This year Debi has worked tirelessly, with particular focus on two work streams. She has been the led for developing and implementing criteria led discharge across the medicine wards and has also been heavily involved in patient flow initiatives, in particular around the rhythm of the day and ensuring the activities around ‘right patient, right place’, ‘golden patient’ and ‘green4go’ work across all areas.

Debi has displayed the core attributes of drive, passion, confidence and capability, and has made a huge difference this year to the impact and effectiveness of local improvements to improve overall care and experience.

Check out the video below to find out why Debi was recognised for outstanding commitment.

Team Talk Briefing – October 2018

TeamTalk, our refocussed team briefing sessions took place last week where attendees were given an update from the Clinical Leadership Executive and were also briefed on national and regional updates.

As part of the session, Divna Young, Pharmacy Team Manager explained to colleagues about how the pharmacy service at City Hospital had transformed following the completion of a improvement project.

If you were not able to make one of the sessions you can download a copy of the briefing presentation and feedback form below.

Team Talk Feedback Form October 18

Team Talk – October 2018 – Staff Briefing

Halloween menu: 30 October

Hallam restaurant, Arches and Boaters will be offering a Halloween theme menu on 30 October so be sure to drop by for a bite to eat.

Chief Executive’s Message – Friday 26 October

I am delighted that TeamTalk this month sees the launch of a whole variety of projects and programmes to help us to become a more engaged, “bottom up” organisation. We have been undertaking Listening into Action projects for many years with real success, and our Speak Up days have built a culture of participation. But we know from your feedback that engagement, advocacy and involvement vary across our Trust. In Primary Care, Community and Therapies, there are consistently high reported levels of satisfaction among our employees and colleagues. We want that everywhere. So, we asked you to contribute to prioritising the work of the Board and executive, and you voted for a focus in three areas:

• Better and reliable IT
• More and consistent approaches to flexible working
• Improved communication, especially about local changes.

We want to deliver on that ask, and prove once and for all that speaking up and asking for something to change makes a difference. By February the guidelines on flexible working in our organisation will be clearer, and it will be simple to understand how to ask for and how to challenge decisions around flexible working. Wherever we can, we want to help to balance home and work, but in any team that will mean some people can exercise flexibility, but possibly not everyone. On the other hand there are many things we do which are a clear endorsement of compassion and flexibility, like the new parental leave arrangements for premature births, or our commitment to offer part-time options for most roles in our workplace. In terms of communication not everyone has a face to face team brief each month. That truly has to change. We cannot pull together as one organisation if conversations are not happening locally. To support line manager’s a new fortnightly briefing note on myths and rumours will be issued, helping local leaders to answer your questions. None of that replaces myConnect, or Heartbeat, or this blog, all of which have a part to play.

On IT, we all know the symptoms. We are working hard on the cause and the treatment remedies. This week we have had our key systems on, and we have made stable our servers. There is more work to do in the days ahead. Our N3 connection is not yet as capable as we wish and we are organising routes to change that. The infrastructure and Wifi projects we announced, and then delayed, will move forward again in November. We are meeting with the new owners of the Winscribe company to see what they can offer us by way of a long term improvement in that systems’ performance. I attach the weekly IT stats. IT Performance Stats 26 October 2018

Unity is still a huge part of the answer both to replacing ICM and to ensuring that we have great clinical data, including electronic prescribing. The latest target date is early March for go-live, but we need everyone trained to make that happen safely.

Right now in our workplace many people have had the NHS national staff survey, and others will get our new quarterly weconnect survey, which replaces Your Voice, and takes us much further into understanding what motivates and excites and worries people responding, anonymously. In other places using this survey, like Wigan, they have seen that it provides a better insight into what needs to happen to improve wellbeing and satisfaction. Please do respond if you are in the sample for either survey. Do respond even if you are quite content. Definitely respond if you have ideas or things that are not ok where you work. This month’s TeamTalk has a super improvement story within it from pharmacy at City, whose change project came directly from voicing concerns to the Trust’s Board.

Getting ready for winter is about more than tackling flu. But since we are in that galaxy, if you have not yet had the jab, please do so in the next fortnight. Many of us have been vaccinated, but we need to cover the Trust to protect ourselves and our patients.

Being ready is also about making sure that we are able to provide extra services, both to tackle pressure, and to support safe discharge. I am delighted that the local Better Care Fund has agreed our project to wrap services around local care homes in partnership with general practice. And we have bids going forward for services to help homeless people, those with mental health conditions, and patients with alcohol misuse as part of their diagnosis. Meanwhile, I have included some terrific short films below from our colleagues in the emergency department who have started a project called SMART to make sure that rapid decisions are made on arrival at the Trust. That includes admitting decisions. No patient, who is stable for transfer, should remain in ED for clerking. On Thursday 1 November we go live with the Single Point of Access (SPA) triage service for local GP calls into the Trust. If you have queries about that development do get in touch with Nuhu Usman or Janice Barrett who have admirably led the project’s development over recent weeks. We want to make sure that only patients who need to be in an ED cubicle are there, so that the next patient arriving has a place to safely go. Over the last three months we have really struggled to get anywhere near the national NHS promise of four hour maximum stay. We have to make the most of the investment and help that we have had to change that. It matters to our patients, and we absolutely do not want to see a patient wait and be harmed. Let’s act now.

Hellomynameis…Toby.

Informatics update: Successful repair work to IT systems at City – Friday 26th October

Dear colleague

The repair work to the City servers carried out overnight has been successful with minimal disruption to IT systems.

Thank you for your cooperation in preparing business continuity plans. This means that our systems storage is now much more reliable.

We continue to build longer-term solutions with our external partners.

Best wishes

Rachel Barlow, Chief Operating Officer

Flu: The facts on flu vaccination and gelatin

There has recently been some news in the media around the Flu vaccination containing gelatin, a porcine substance which is used as a stabiliser in some vaccinations.  To confirm, the adult Flu vaccination does not contain any pork derivatives or gelatine substances.

To clarify, only the nasal Flu vaccination given to children does contain a gelatin substance.  The only occupational vaccination that does contain a porcine substance, is the MMR vaccination but it should be noted that many multi-faith organisations approve of the usage of vaccinations as they are not administered orally.  Please see the statement below from Public Health England.

Public Health England (PHE) has consulted with the Kashrut and Medicines Information Service, who said:

‘It should be noted that according to Jewish laws, there is no problem with porcine or other animal derived ingredients in non-oral products. This includes vaccines, including those administered via the nose, injections, suppositories, creams and ointments.’

However, PHE acknowledges that there is diversity within the British Muslim and Jewish communities and they, and some other groups, may consider medicines and vaccines containing any porcine product to be forbidden. In these circumstances, it is likely that the individual would be unable to accept many pharmaceutical products unless there was no suitable alternative and/or the product was considered life-saving’.

We ask that serious consideration is given before declining any vaccinations containing porcine substances which protect against deadly viruses, such as the MMR vaccination and that conversations are held with faith leaders regarding whether vaccination is appropriate.

Further information can be found in the attached Public Health England notice: PHE Vaccines porcine gelatine

National speak up month – simple things done well

We’re supporting Speak Up Month this October: a national campaign by the National Guardian’s Office, which calls on NHS organisations to increase awareness of how colleagues can raise concerns at work.

Thank you to everyone who took part in the ‘simple things done well’ survey as part of our Speak Up Day last month.

Your feedback told us that your top three priorities are

• IT that works everyday
• More flexible working approaches
• Improved communication about change

Suggested solutions and ideas have also been put forward and include:

• Ensuring there is a proper process in place for testing and replacing faulty equipment in a timely manner
• Every computer in clinical areas being setup with access to all clinical systems to ensure staff have easy access to IT
• IT support in community sites to be treated with the same urgency as the acute sites to prevent delays to care.

This month’s Heartbeat will tell you how we are making improvements on the issues raised.

Pharmacy Notice: Co-amoxiclav and valproate

Co Amoxiclav Safety Notice:

We have received an anecdotal report from one ward that vials of co-amoxiclav 1.2g injection, once reconstituted, are a yellow/orange colour, unlike the usual clear liquid.

The affected product is a Sandoz brand:

• Batch Number: HK5799
• Expiry: 07/19

This batch and brand is currently in stock across SWBH and pharmacy has not received any other reports from other clinical areas.

Please see drugs safety notice regarding co-amoxiclav 1.2g injection below:

Co amoxiclav safety notice

Valproate Safety Notice:

The MHRA have issued an alert in April 2018 about new prescribing and dispensing requirements for all Valproate medicines, commonly used for epilepsy and bipolar disorder, as well as other off label indications. The most commonly dispensed are Epilim and Depakote brands, other brands are available.

Valproate is highly teratogenic and evidence supports that use in pregnancy leads to birth defects in 10 in every 100 babies, (compared to a background rate of 2 to 3 in 100) and neurodevelopmental disorders in approximately 30 to 40 in every 100 children born to mothers taking valproate.

Valproate medicines should therefore no longer be used in women or girls of childbearing age unless a Pregnancy Prevention Programme ‘Prevent’ is in place, irrespective of indication.

This programme will ensure that female patients taking valproate medicines:

• Have been told and understand the risks of use in pregnancy and have signed a Risk acknowledgement Form
• Are on highly effective contraception if necessary
• See their specialist at least every year

This requirement is applicable to all premenopausal female patients, unless the prescriber considers that there are compelling reasons to indicate that there is no risk of pregnancy.

Further guidance for healthcare professionals can be found at the following link:

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/708850/123683_Valproate_HCP_Booklet_DR15.pdf

Please see memo regarding valproate below for further details:

Valproate memo

If you have any further questions please contact your ward pharmacist, or the Medicines Information Department on ext. 5259.