Monthly archives: February 2019
Latest edition of Heartbeat now online
The latest edition of Heartbeat is now available to view online. This edition of Heartbeat features our recent full dress rehearsal of our electronic patient record, Unity and the Trust becoming the provider of school nursing services across the Sandwell borough.
Ordering uniform and dress code update
Message from the Chief Nurse, Paula Gardner: Ordering uniforms
As clinicians begin in our organisation it is vital that they have the right equipment and uniforms to do their jobs. We have recently agreed to allocate five uniforms to people who are working full-time. If you are the line manager of people who wear uniforms you must make sure that:
- You place the order for their uniforms as soon as their appointment is confirmed. To do this complete the uniform order form (Appendix 4 in the uniform policy) send it to Sandwell Sewing room.
- Ensure that you order five uniforms for your new starter if they are full-time.
- Uniform allocations should be sensibly adjusted for part-time workers.
If you have any difficulty with receiving uniforms in time or any queries please contact the Carol Williams, Ward Services Manager carol.williams12@nhs.net ext. 3629.
Atrial fibrillation knowledge sharing event: 9 April
The Cardiovascular Disease Clinical Network are working in collaboration with the British Heart Foundation and Public Health England to run a regional atrial fibrillation knowledge sharing event on Tuesday 9 April at Aston Villa Football Club, Birmingham.
This is a clinical networking event and will give attendees the opportunity to learn about improvements in atrial fibrillation care across the whole healthcare system.
If you wish to attend this event please register via the Eventbrite page.
For more information please contact england.cvdnetwork1@nhs.net.
Fizz Free February – Save money, save your teeth and stay healthy
Taking part in Fizz Free February is a great way to reduce your sugar intake by cutting out fizzy drinks.
Fizzy drinks are the largest single source of sugar for children aged 11-18, and they provide an average of 29 per cent of daily sugar intake. By committing to going fizz free for the entire month of February, you can develop new habits to make it easier to cut down on fizzy drinks for the rest of the year.
Be sure to check out this video featuring Petrina Marsh, Clinical Lead children’s therapies and nurse service and Paul Hooton, Deputy Chief Nurse. Filmed at Crocketts Community Primary School, they’re encouraging children to stop or reduce their fizzy drink consumption during Fizz Free February.
Save money, save your teeth and stay healthy, join us in #FizzFreeFeb
Mental health support service for colleagues: 28 February
The access to work mental health support service, delivered by Remploy, provides confidential one-to-one workplace mental health support for Trust colleagues. The next session is taking place on Thursday 28 February.
For more information please see mental wellbeing session sheet.
To book please contact occupational health on ext. 3306.
Heartbeat: Listening to moms helps improve our maternity care
Every year, the Care Quality Commission (CQC) carry out a maternity survey as part of a national programme to capture and collect feedback on the experiences of women using NHS maternity services across the country.
Here at SWBH we are keen to ensure that we make the most of the valuable insight and opinions of our patients to ensure that we are able to meet their needs and deliver a safe an effective care.
To find out more about the national maternity survey, Heartbeat caught up with, Lorraine Cardill, Deputy Director of Midwifery to discuss the results and find out what was being done to act on suggestions. Lorraine said: “Following feedback from the 2018 survey, we put in place processes for women who are undergoing induction of labour to have a birth partner accompany them. We had concerns about how other women in a shared room may feel about this so, with their involvement, we produced some guidance whereby the birth partner is female unless the woman is in a single bedroom.
Lorraine continued: “This year we will implement our continuity of carer work which will see women cared for by the same midwife for the majority of her antenatal and postnatal care, as well as being cared for in labour by a midwife who is known to her.
The maternity team are continuously seeking to improve care so that all women have the best possible pregnancy, birth and postnatal experience.
“There are a variety ways in which we can improve, for example, ensuring that our communication is always clear and that women and their partners are truly involved with all elements of their care, and in making choices,” said Lorraine
The national maternity survey was commissioned by the CQC and sent to all new mothers aged 16 or over who were due to give birth in our units in February last year. Of those who were sent a survey, just 21 per cent responded.
“It can be challenging to encourage people to complete any kind of survey, especially when they also have a young baby.” said Lorraine.
“However, after analysing the results, we can see that the service is moving in the right direction with progress being made in labour and birth.”
Heartbeat: Event showcases how innovation improves patient care
Technology was the main feature at this year’s annual healthcare science innovations event aimed at clinical and non-clinical colleagues from across our workplace.
Melvina Barsby, Advanced Cardiac Physiologist kicked proceedings off with an app which helps to monitor cardiac rhythm management . The tool would be installed on patients’ smartphone devices allowing for constant cardiac management using low energy Bluetooth technology.
Melvina believes the cardiac rhythm tool would be beneficial for the Trust. She said: “This app will be fantastic for us as it would mean that we could check our patient’s readings at ease. It also gives patients back control thus improving patient care. In addition, it will allow us to be more effective in our jobs as it reduces the number of phone calls regarding small queries from patients as they would have easy access to all the information they need through the app.”
This presentation was then followed by a look at an exciting new piece of hardware – video head impulse goggles designed for testing inner-ear balance function. The goggles use a high speed camera and dual axis gyroscopes to track the patient’s eye movements.
Claire Lingard, Principal Clinical Scientist in audiology, led the demonstration for the goggles and said: “The video head impulse goggles offer more robust data, greater test sensitivity and can ensure a range of frequencies are tested.”
“The advantages of the goggles for our Trust are that we would have more reliable and faster diagnoses, save appointment time in assessment clinics and patients could be quickly progressed into rehabilitation clinics.”
To conclude the event Gregory James, Senior Clinical Scientist in nuclear medicine spoke about the team’s gastric emptying studies. They have been looking into the normal rates for food to empty from the stomach, and are trying to set up standard simple meal recipes for other departments in the UK to use. The rate that food empties from the stomach changes depending on the food eaten, and this will allow hospitals to compare test results more easily.
Jilly Croasdale, Associate Director, Healthcare Science organised the event and said: “I think the 2019 healthcare science innovations day event was a huge success as it allowed an array of clinical colleagues show how science, technology and innovation is being used within our organisation to improve patient care.”
Heartbeat: The best pregnancy for mums-to-be
The maternity team is encouraging pregnant women to use a mobile application to access information about their pregnancy more quickly.
The UK Maternity Portal is an application for smartphones, tablets and PCs, which allows women and their GPs real time access to maternity records.
The portal, which has a direct link to our organisation’s maternity health records, provides women instant information, including their blood pressure results, their babies’ development and when their next appointment is.
Joanne Bryer, Midwife, explained: “We have found the app to be really popular – over 2,000 people have used it so far.
“This app not only provides women with all the necessary information about their health records, it also gives them links to online patient leaflets and useful literature about pregnancy and looking after newborn babies.
“Women can also update where they would like to give birth. The information will help their midwives plan ahead for their delivery.
“GPs also have the access to the records in real time, which means they can keep up-todate with their patients’ health.
“We believe this app is very useful for mums to- be, midwives, and GPs.”
Women who have been referred to City Hospital are encouraged to ask their midwives about the app. They will be given a secure username and password so they may only access their own data.
Chief Executive’s Message – Friday 22 February
Thank you to everyone working hard to get ready for the start of April when dozens of expert school nurses join our organisation (in some cases re-joining us) and when the Trust, with partners, takes responsibility for GP services in Great Bridge, and the current Summerfield (Heath Street) and Parsonage Street (Lyndon) surgeries. We have plenty to learn from our new recruits, new alliances to build with patients and with schools, and a fair bit of work to do. Last month our TeamTalk Learning From Excellence video was about Rate My Day, a project from Foot Health about employee wellbeing and morale. It is good to see that project being part of the induction experience for our new school nursing teams. Of course not all of our community work is going so well. I want to thank our community based midwives, some of whom are working in poor conditions right now (having been moved out of Local Authority buildings that closed) and I know we are trying very hard to sort out the issue. To reiterate a message I do try and give here from time to time – anyone who works in our Trust can contact either the Chairman or myself with questions or queries. Your line manager will almost always be a better source of information or help, but nonetheless, there is no bar to speaking up. And we do reply.
This month’s Heartbeat will feature the changes that will be made in coming months arising from the third of our sample who filled out 2018’s weconnect survey. The next survey is out right now – so if it comes your way, please do raise your voice and get your ideas in. It was after all one of our employees who spoke up about getting rid of non-biodegradable plastic cutlery, two of our colleagues who started the Period Poverty campaign in the Trust which goes live next month, and now your feedback which means that our policies are available at your fingertips if you download our myConnect app. This is Connect on your mobile. But on your mobile, or tablet, our policies have a search function – making them much, much easier to use. Over the next three months many of our policies are being updated and so now is a great time to get ready by joining over 2000 Trust peers on myConnect.
Download myConnect from either the Apple Appstore or the Google Playstore on to your mobile phone or tablet and you will have access to news, blogs, policies and Unity quick reference guides at your fingertips. Simply search for ‘SWBH myConnect’ on the appstore or scan the QR code below on your mobile phone.
I very much hope you enjoyed your half term. That seems a timely moment to remind you that in a fortnight’s time we will launch our flexible working pledge, in response to your feedback on Speak Up Day about issues you wanted sorted. Get your ideas in through TeamTalk. One idea we are working through is a school holidays club to help working parents. That might mean you get some flexibility about holidays yourself, and we get the chance to spread leave across the year, as more and more staff (not just in critical care) move to annualised hours contracts. If you are interested in that type of contract get in touch with your local HR ‘business partner’, whose names are below:
- Medicine and Emergency Care: Nick Bellis
- Women and Child Health, Governance, and IT: Del Radway
- Surgical Services: Alison Newcomb-Ferreday
- Estates, New Hospital and Corporate Nursing: Sarah Towe
- Finance, OD, Operations: Annabel Roberts
- Primary Care, Community and Therapies: Julia Crannage
- Imaging: Stephanie Cowin
Would you like £3,000 more in your bank account? Tax free and not pensionable. That’s what most smokers in our Trust could save annually by quitting. There are just a bit more than 130 days until we go smoke free. Vaping providers will be on site (s) in coming weeks as we look to help our smoking colleagues “trade up” – in line with advice from Public Health England. Nicotine replacement therapy will become very, very available in our Trust this spring to both staff and patients. March’s QIHD will see a focus on our readiness and also guidance about how specific patients will be affected. Heartbeat with your February pay-slip will give you more information (can I park my car, and smoke in it? No) (will I be fined if I smoke on site? Yes) etc etc.
Congratulations to Sally and the Neurophysiology department. Their Fax Machine is retiring on March 31st. See details in daily comms on what replaces it, which will stay the same when Unity comes in later in 2019. When’s yours off? If you don’t have a Fax Retirement Plan you need to be working on it, as they will all be gone by March 2020. Our deputy chief operating officer, Liam Kennedy, is taking a break from scrapping colour printing, production planning and FDR, to lead this, so get your ideas to him.
From April our budgets are being set slightly differently. Our directorates will take the lead. Each are agreeing budgets with me, on behalf of the Board. Group and Executive colleagues remain responsible for our financial well-being. But senior ‘frontline’ leaders such as Bushra, Jay, Ruth, Nuhu, John, Kulwinder, and Abhay will be signing off on budgets for April 2019 to March 2020. Maintaining our premier league position as the Trust that makes the money work for students, patients and research is intensely important. With over £400m coming our way from London, we have a responsibility to invest to save, and to invest for health. We will commit over £20m of new investments in staff and another £30m in equipment, IT and estates. My message is simple: Dispute how we spend the money, but let’s not pretend a £500m turnover organisation is poor. We are fortunate and make choices. I want those choices made closer to where you work, and our directorate leadership teams will become the engine room for improvement as we move towards Midland Met: A full guide to who’s who in our leadership structure will be in March’s Heartbeat.
Also in March we will follow up the extra car parking spaces, with our wider plan to change car parking at the Trust. It looks like our new car parks at Sandwell and City will be with us by October 2020. But the great news is that our GP practice at Sandwell got planning consent last week, and building work starts this May. So both changes mean we need to get moving with taking some cars off site, and others cars off the road by car sharing, using public transport and even more cycling (especially if you live within half a mile of our sites). As I have written here before the Pay-As-You-Use scheme will be relaunched, ready for April, and we are finalising schemes for those who only use our car parks at night or on weekends. As the spring sunshine brightens, do you need a car every day?
The Trust’s Public Health collaboration on Clean Air launches in March… #justsaying
March also sees a country-wide drive to make sure that cervical screening take up improves. More than three quarters of everyone in our organisation is female: Most all eligible for life saving screening. Please do not let pressure of work stop you. Your line manager will support you. Get your screening done.
Attached are this week’s IT stats: IT Performance Stats 22 February 2019
#hellomynameisToby
New framework to describe modified foods coming to our Trust
The International Dysphagia Diet Standardisation Initiative (IDDSI) is a new, international framework to describe modified foods and fluids for people with dysphagia (swallowing difficulties).
The IDDSI is a continuum of 8 levels (0-7) and is coded with labels, numbers, and colours. This will replace the current UK national descriptors.
Standardised descriptors and testing methods will allow modified fluid and diet consistencies to be easily replicated between community, home and hospital. Most other trusts around the West Midlands have now transitioned over so patients may be coming into our trust on these new descriptors.
We have worked closely with catering to ensure the menus and food provided meets these new guidelines.
Our Trust will go live with the new framework on Tuesday 12 March.
You can contact the SLT department on 0121 507 4486 option 2 if you would like to speak to anyone in the team regarding this. You can also follow our Twitter feed where we will be posting updates @swbh_slt.
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