Monthly archives: November 2018

Further career development: Nurse Associate

Are you a health care assistant with level 2 maths and English and GCSE level C or above?

Would you like to further your career development into nursing and become a nurse associate?

We have opportunities available for you to undertake and be supported through the nurse associate training this coming year.

For further information please contact the nurse education team and express your interest by 30 November.

For more information please email swbh.nurse-education@nhs.net or cal ext. 6149.

Only one week until the launch of the new national pressure categorising tool

The new recommendations from NHS Improvement on the categorising of pressure ulcers will enable an accurate profile of pressure damage to be recorded. The intention is to improve quality by reducing the harm patients experience.

Come and meet the tissue viability nurses at the Sandwell roadshow today from 11.30-12.30.

They will be offering training on the new pressure ulcer categories which will be released across the Trust on 1 December.

To ensure correct reporting of pressure ulcers, come and find out about the new recommendations.

Sepsis is our number one quality priority: Day 23 of our campaign

Sepsis in Maternity

Sepsis is a rare but important cause of maternal deaths every year in the UK. Thanks to the longest running clinical audit in medicine (Enquiry into Maternal Deaths Triennial Report) which dates back to the 1950s we know the direct and indirect causes of why mothers die in pregnancy and up to a year after giving birth. World-wide sepsis remains a leading cause but in the UK it has dropped down the list so that in 2014-16 genital tract or puerperal sepsis accounted for 11 maternal deaths (4% of total). This is still 11 mothers too many especially given our knowledge that:

• Prompt recognition of signs of sepsis
• Use of warning scores/charts and pathways for management (“Sepsis 6”)
• Effective treatment, including IV antibiotics, starting within one hour

All of which can all make a difference in preventing unnecessary serious harm or even death.

In maternity at SWBH we use specialised MEWS charts to pick up amber and red flag signs for sepsis and a maternity-modified Sepsis 6 pathway. This was designed in conjunction with microbiology and has then been promoted and adopted across the West Midlands in other maternity units. It is designed to pick up those women antenatally, in labour or following delivery who do develop genuine signs of sepsis and who require urgent medical and midwifery intervention whilst avoiding labelling lots of women who can develop minor signs as a normal consequence of pregnancy or labour. This has helped us to target treatment more effectively, avoid unnecessary antibiotic usage, reduce maternity HDU occupancy whilst still reducing maternal (and neonatal) harm from maternal sepsis.

This is down to good staff knowledge, effective team working across maternity and THINKING SEPSIS.

3 per cent from herd immunity: Get your flu jab now

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXEQkDdhpDQ

We’re currently 3 per cent from herd immunity with 77 per cent of our front facing colleagues being vaccinated. This mean we only need 120 patient facing colleagues to get their jab to reach herd immunity.

To help reach 80 per cent herd immunity, we are still offering additional flu jab drop-in sessions today across our sites:

Sandwell

• Friday 23 November: Occupational Health courtyard gardens, 1pm-4pm

City

• Friday 23 November: Old foot health clinic, 8.30am-11:30am

Our nurses will also be walking around both City and Sandwell sites at various times over the next few weeks, please ring them on the flu mobiles if you would like them to come to your ward or department.

• City phone – 07976 640187
• Sandwell phone –  07976 428284

Be sure to check out this video featuring Puneet Sharma who is encouraging all to get the flu jab.

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

NHS talent sought

Featured in The Sandwell Chronicle.

TALENTED nurses and operating department practitioners are encouraged to visit a local Hospital Trust’s recruitment event and land their dream job before Christmas.
The event, which is organised by Sandwell and West Birmingham NHS Trust, will give candidates the opportunity to walk away with conditional on-the-spot job offers. The Trust, which is one of the top 50 UK inclusive employers, is expecting to welcome more than 100 visitors to the event.
Paul Hooton, Deputy Chief Nurse, said: “We are excited to be hosting another jobs fair, following previous successful recruitment events. It’s a great opportunity for us to showcase what we offer nurses and operating department practitioners if they come and work with us. Our specialty teams from Cardiology, Stroke, Theatres, Paediatrics, District Nursing, and many others, will be at the event to talk to visitors about what we do and how we make a difference to the lives of our patients.”
Paul added: “Our staff benefits programme has been recognised nationally and has won a number of awards. When working with us, our employees receive regular discounts when they do their shopping and have free access to a wide range of health and wellbeing programmes within our Trust.

“What makes us one of the best places to work in the NHS is our tailored training programme, where each member of staff receives the training that they need so that they can progress. Nurses are also able to move to a different team within the Trust easily, thanks to our flexible working programme, whilst our theatres team is expanding.”

The drop-in event will take place on Saturday, 1 December, at the Postgraduate Centre, City Hospital, Dudley Road, between 10am – 4.30pm. For more information about the event and how to secure an interview on the day, please visit http://www.swbhjobs.co.uk/our-events/. 

Are you pressure ulcer ready? Only 8 days to go!

The new recommendations from NHS Improvement on the categorising of pressure ulcers will enable an accurate profile of pressure damage to be recorded. The intention is to improve quality by reducing the harm patients experience.

The new recommendations will become effective within our Trust from 1 December.

This afternoon, the tissue viability nurses will be visiting wards at City Hospital for training – it only talks 5 minutes of your time so don’t miss this opportunity.

If you miss us on the wards, come and see us at the roadshow in Sandwell reception on Friday 23 November, 11.30am-12.30pm.

Full list of dates/times/locations for the pressure ulcer training plan for w/c 19 November.

Night time flu vaccinations at Sandwell Hospital – 22 November

Occupational health will be doing a night time walk about to offer flu jabs to colleagues at Sandwell Hospital today (Thursday 22 November) 9:30pm-11:30pm.

Colleagues can call 07976 428284 should they require a night time flu vaccination. Colleagues can also ring the nurses on the flu phone to request for them to attend their area/department.

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

Sepsis is our number one quality priority: Day 22 of our campaign

Message on behalf of Maternity:

Maternal sepsis is defined as “Any pregnant or recently pregnant woman (up to 6 weeks postpartum) diagnosed with severe sepsis (irrespective of the source of infection)”. Mortality due to severe sepsis during or after pregnancy has been one of the leading direct/ indirect causes of maternal death in the UK over many years. Maternal sepsis can, if not recognised or treated quickly, cause a rapid deterioration in a pregnant woman or new mother, leading to septicaemic shock and eventually death.

There are a number of recognised risk factors for maternal sepsis, including caesarean section, anaemia and co-morbidities, with screening and treatment extending to ensure the unborn, or newborn baby is also considered as ‘at risk’ (albeit maternal wellbeing takes precedent, legally, over consideration of the unborn baby). The key to ensuring positive outcomes remain early identification, screening and, where indicated administration of antibiotics within the ‘golden hour’.

Whilst it is essential that sepsis is considered when women present with associated symptoms, application of the ‘medical model’ of sepsis screening is not entirely appropriate in the maternity care setting. For this reason, SWBH maternity services worked with the National Lead for Sepsis UK and partner organisations to develop a regional maternal sepsis screening tool. Implementation of this tool has seen a significant reduction in the number of pregnant women being treated for sepsis when this is not the reason for ‘abnormal’ observations; as a result of this, fewer newborn babies have received prophylactic IV antibiotics that were not clinically needed. Examples of situations where treatment initiation was triggered include labouring women whose heart and respiration rates were elevated and who also had an increased temperature but who were clinically well. When in labour, it is normal for heart and respiration rates to increase together with body temperature hence a different threshold for these was essential, based on evidence, to ensure the right women were triggering for sepsis screening and treatment at the right time.

All of our babies who require neonatal unit care are screened and receive prophylaxic treatment for sepsis; newborn babies are some of our most vulnerable patients and so we must ensure they are protected against the risk of sepsis which can further complicate their recovery journey.

Multi-professional mandatory training includes sepsis screening and management, with case based scenarios – these are presented to the MDT participating, with skills drills opportunities to ensure all of the team are well rehearsed in the provision of proactive screening and responsive, evidence based treatment with the emphasis being on timeliness to prevent harm. We are very proud of how the team have adopted this approach and also the high compliance with the evidence base, ensuring our women and babies receive the right treatment, in the right place at the right time and avoiding unnecessary poor outcomes associated with sepsis.

The regional maternity sepsis screening tool can be found as part of Guideline SWBH/MAT/108: Sepsis in Obstetrics early detection, identification and treatment.

Fax discontinuing at community contact centre from 1 December

From 1 December, the community contact centre will no longer be accepting faxes.

The contact centre have implemented telephone and email as a primary form of contact due to the unreliability and safety of information sent by fax.

Services can be contacted by email:

Community Respiratory: swbh.respiratoryservice@nhs.net
Community Heart Failure: sandwell.heartfailure@nhs.net
Community Orthopaedic Service: sandwell.cosref@nhs.net
Dietetics: sandwell.dietetics@nhs.net
District Nurses: sandwell.districtnursing@nhs.net
Foot Health: sandwell.foothealth@nhs.net
Integrated Care Service (ICARES): sandwell.icares@nhs.net
MSK Physiotherapy: sandwell.physio@nhs.net

For more information please call the community services contact centre on 0121 507 2664.

Medical gas equipment inspection at Sandwell and Rowley

All wall suction and air and oxygen flowmeters are currently being audited, inspected and tested.

Any equipment found to be faulty will be repaired or replaced and all systems left in working order.

The inspections will be carried out by O2SM (Oxygen Suction Management) and the contractors will be easily identifiable.

It would be appreciated if you could assist in this process to minimise disruption.

For more information please call ext. 4070, option 3.

Thank you for your cooperation.