Monthly archives: November 2018

Recommend a nurse for the Trust’s recruitment open day and you could pocket £100

 

Do you know a nurse who is looking for an opportunity to work within our Trust? Why not recommend them and if they are successfully recruited at our jobs fair, you could earn £100.

The event will take place on this Saturday, 1 December, at the Postgraduate Centre, City Hospital, 10am-4.30pm.

Successful candidates will be given a conditional job offer on the day.

For more information about the Open Day, please click here.

To read more about terms and conditions about the “recommend a friend” scheme, please click here. ​

Heartbeat: The four is strong in SWBH

Fantastic news – over 80 per cent of our patient facing colleagues have now had their flu vaccination, giving them four shields of protection over the virus.  Reaching 80 per cent means that we have now achieved herd immunity, which will keep us all a little safer as we go through the winter and keep our patients safer too.

This year, we launched our brand new campaign, ‘May the 4 be with you,’ a play on the famous Star Wars quote, which celebrates the four elements of protection this season’s quadrivelent flu vaccine offers.

Colleagues from across the organisation embraced the theme, with many dressing up as iconic characters from the film, including; Chief Nurse, Paula Gardner as Obi-Wan Kenobi,  Medical Director, David Carruthers as Hans Solo and Director of People and OD, Raffaela Goodby donning an impressive Princess Leia costume.

Our campaign launched with colleagues from our communications and occupational health teams starring as characters in a flu inspired poem, which drew praise from organisations such as NHS England and Sandwell and West Birmingham CCG.

As well as dressing up as characters, colleagues shared their reasons for having the flu vaccine, with many people having it for the first time this year, including Finance Manager, Masood Hussain.

Previously, Masood had been put off having his vaccine as he believed it contained pork or other animal derivatives, but encouraged by the new campaign – he decided to investigate if indeed this was true.

He said to Heartbeat: “The campaign this year is so eye catching that it made me think that I should try and seek clarification, so I contacted occupational health who confirmed that the vaccine they use didn’t contain any pork or other meat products or derivatives.

“Thanks to this reassurance, I had my vaccine for the first time – as did many other Muslim and BME colleagues.”

To inject an element of fun into the campaign, we ran a who is ‘Flubacca’ competition, where many colleagues took the chance to guess who was behind the mask. Guesses included, Chief Pharmacist, Puneet Sharma and Deputy Chief Nurse, Paul Hooton, but the man behind the mask turned out to be non-other than Chief Executive, Toby Lewis.

Tracy Lees, Occupational Health & Wellbeing Nurse Manager is delighted with the success of this year’s campaign: “We have achieved herd immunity in just over seven weeks – the quickest we have ever it done it – so thank you to colleagues and vaccinators who have really embraced the campaign this year.

“With that being said, I still think as a Trust we should aim to protect everyone and ideally we want 100 per cent of colleagues to have had their flu injection, so please do come forward if you are yet to have yours.”

If you wish to have your flu vaccine please contact occupational health on extension 3306.

Sepsis is our number one quality priority: Day 28 of our campaign

Sepsis message from Nicola Taylor, Acting Group Director of Nursing – Primary Care Community and Therapies:

As a group we recognise that community nurses, therapists and health care support workers are often the first contact that many patients have with health care professionals. Often we see patients on a regular basis and are well placed to recognise the signs of Sepsis early and raise the alarm to enable prompt identification and treatment.

It’s been incredibly important to us as a group that we recognise that Sepsis identification is not just the role of a nurse or a doctor but that all healthcare professionals think Sepsis.

welearn Poster Competition

In September we launched our first annual welearn  poster competition, to engage and empower colleagues to share their good practice, quality initiatives, innovation, research and partnership work that has resulted in an improvement for patients, relatives and colleagues.

Throughout September and October, colleagues from across our Trust have been hard at work in their QIHDs producing posters highlighting their great work to enter in to this year’s welearn QIHD poster competition.

Teams and individuals who have entered this competition now have the opportunity to have their hard work celebrated and recognised and also stand a chance to win a £5,000 prize.

Voting for your favourite

As well as being shared on Connect, all of the posters are being displayed in the Education Centre and the foyer of Hallam Restaurant at Sandwell Hospital.

You also have the opportunity to vote on-line for your three favourite posters and by doing so enter a draw to win a £25 shopping voucher. Login to the voting form below using your windows login details and pick your top three favourite posters, place a tick  next to them in the list and hit the submit button at the bottom of the form.

Or if you prefer you can complete a paper vote by visiting the Library in the Education Centre at Sandwell Hospital.

Your votes will go towards supporting the teams you pick as the popular staff vote.

Enjoy viewing the posters and finding out about the great quality improvement initiatives taking place across the Trust, and encourage your colleagues to do so too.

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Poster Gallery

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Heartbeat: 10 by 10 to increase discharge rates

As winter approaches our organisation is working towards ensuring we are ready for this challenging period.

One of the many initiatives to tackle the pressures is introducing the “10 by 10” message – which aims for us to discharge 10 patients a day before 10am.

This would mean that each ward would discharge one patient a day.

Colleagues are working together to put this into practice with a number of initiatives.

Martin Chadderton, Head of Analytics (Improvement), explains: “By discharging patients in a timely manner we will invariably have given them the right care when they need it and ultimately that is what we are here to do; it also means that we are thinking and planning ahead and as a result there are no ‘wasted days’ for the patient whilst in hospital.

“One of the initiatives to enable this is called the ‘Big Room’. This is initially being piloted on Lyndon 4, Lyndon 5 and Priory 5 at Sandwell Hospital.

“The whole team in each ward will gather once a week to look at what the main issues are and how to address them. The following week the team will look retrospectively at what has been done and resolved.

“Wards from across the organisation are also being asked to identify a ‘golden patient’; an initiative championed by Deborah Fretwell (Ward Matron) and the medicines patient flow team. The ward will pick someone in our care each day who could potentially be discharged the following day before 10am.

“The team will look at making sure that the right measures are in place for this to happen. That means thinking ahead with regards to transport, pharmacy and the package of care that is required, if any, once they are at home.

“It’s very much in line with our Red to Green policy. This is where a patient starts the day as red, but if issues regarding their care are addressed, they will be classed as green by the end of the day and hopefully will be discharged sooner. This may not always be the case, and if they are required to stay in our care they will revert back to red.”

Indian menu: 28 November

Hallam restaurant, Arches and Boaters will be offering a Indian theme menu on 28 November so be sure to drop by for a bite to eat.

Chicken jalfrezi	£2.95
Creamy Indian vegetable korma	£2.65
Lamb rogan josh	£2.95
Bombay potatoes	67p
Patna rice	95p
Indian spiced greens	45p
Homemade vegetable samosa	85p
Homemade vegetable pakora	85p
Naan bread	50p
Chapatti	50p
Gulab jaman	£1.15
Rice kheer	£1.15

SystmOne scheduled downtime – Saturday 8 December

Our SystmOne supplier will be carrying out its annual business continuity and disaster recovery test in collaboration with NHS Digital on Saturday 8 December from 1pm-1.20pm.

Reminder messages will be displayed 60 minutes and 10 minutes before SystmOne becomes unavailable.

Note: Users are required to save all data before 1pm on Saturday 8 December. 

ITV Central News’s coverage of Alcohol Awareness Week.

ITV Central News interviewed one of our patients, Rachel Bassett, and Alcohol Lead Nurse Arlene Copland, about the work that the Trust has been doing to help patients who are alcohol dependent.

You can watch the full interview below.

 

Help us improve services provided at our Education Centres

In an effort to improve the service provided by our education centres, we are running a month long survey of all who use the facilities.

The surveys are in paper form and will be made available in all rooms at the Education Centre at Sandwell and Postgraduate Centre at City.

Although they are concise, and therefore will only take a few minutes to complete, the feedback will greatly help us to ensure you are getting the service you need to enable you to focus on your priorities.

Please take the time to fill in the form each time you use our facilities over the next month.

If you need an electronic copy of the form please email sianshingler@nhs.net or karenparry2@nhs.net.

Homeless Team – out of hours support

Trust Service: Monday–Friday, 9am–5pm:

During office working hours the homeless team are available to respond to all referrals/enquiries you have regarding the homeless or vulnerably housed patients. The team cover cross site and are available Monday – Friday 9am – 5pm.  Please contact either:

• Helen Taylor – 07580 677913
• Louise Edwards – 07580 677884
• Alycia Deacon – 07989 148281

Evenings 5pm–11pm and weekends (not 24 hour operational):

Unfortunately homeless services overall are limited out of hours including evenings and weekends where housing assessments will not be possible. However should you have a homeless patient out of hours please use the information contact list below for help and support.

• Council housing options – out of hours: 0121 303 2296 (After 5pm weekdays and weekends)
• Rough Sleepers Team: 07483 981912 (up to 11pm).

The rough sleepers team are also available Monday – Friday evenings between 6.30pm – 8.30pm at SIFA Fireside, 48-52 Allcock Street, Digbeth, B9 6DY.

Streetlink (Rough Sleepers) 0300 500 0914 (Up to 11pm).

Note: Accommodation out of hours is not always guaranteed however they may be able to give you help and advice over the phone with a view to signposting patients once services re-open.

For more information on homeless services please contact the team directly on the number above.