Monthly archives: April 2019
Entering PDR dates and scores on Connect
If you are a manager and have the responsibility for carrying out PDRs, it is important your team’s PDR meetings are now scheduled to take place during the PDR cycle.
Over 4,400 booked dates were submitted using the new form on Connect. General feedback has been positive and as a result a new form is now available on Connect for managers to enter completed PDR dates and scores.
How to enter PDR dates and scores
Managers can enter PDR dates and scores on Connect by selecting the ‘Enter PDR Date & Score’ button on the homepage. You will be directed to page containing a form to complete and submit. The book PDR date form is still available to use if you still need to schedule future PDR dates.
[su_button url="https://connect2.swbh.nhs.uk/learning-development/aspiring-to-excellence-homepage/submit-pdr-dates-pdr-scores-and-booked-dates/" style="flat" background="#18b3f5" color="#ffffff" size="6" wide="yes" radius="5" icon="icon: calendar"]Enter a new PDR date and score[/su_button]If you have already entered your completed PDR dates and scores on ESR you do not need to repeat the process using Connect. If you prefer to enter PDR dates and scores directly on ESR instead of using the form on Connect this is fine, both methods will be accepted.
If you need further assistance entering PDR dates and scores please email swbh.pdr@nhs.net and a member of the learning & development team will be in contact.
Speak up day
On Wednesday we held our 4th Speak Up Day. Speak up Day is an opportunity for you to find out about the different ways to speak up and meet our Freedom to Speak up Guardians and other leaders, who were out and about on Wednesday talking to people about the importance of speaking up.
Our Trust has a strong track record in encouraging people to speak up and there are a range of ways that you can do this including talking to your manager, contacting a Trade Union rep, raising an incident, writing to our Heartbeat letters page, talking to a Trust specialist such as Counter-Fraud, ringing Safecall (our confidential whistleblowing line), or getting help from a Freedom to Speak up Guardian.
There is still opportunity for you to have you to speak up and have your say. We would appreciate it if you could spare us a couple of minutes to complete our Speak up survey as will enable us to better create a speak up culture together.
https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/TZ5C7Q5
All of our Speak up Guardians have received specialised training and are well placed to listen to issues and guide concerned colleagues on the best way to resolve those problems. This gives colleagues the avenue to be able to turn to Guardians if they want to talk about any issues they feel need addressing.
Find out how you can Speak up and who our Freedom to Speak up Guardians are in the attached poster Speak up guardians
Heartbeat: Seeking volunteers to support relatives of theatre patients
When a loved one is brought into hospital at short notice, care does not stop with their welfare. For the family of those who are undergoing treatment, it can be an incredibly stressful time.
During the period the family member is under the care of our colleagues, information from a clear voice and a calm head can prove invaluable.
As such the volunteer service is seeking new volunteers to act as theatre and critical care liaisons. This would involve helping relatives during instances where a family member has been taken in for unplanned surgery. They act as the go between for practitioners and relatives, providing updates on surgery times, advice, comfort and information about key amenities, such as local transport and hotel options. All with the aim of enhancing the care experience.
Six volunteers have already signed up and they will be the first to fulfil this new role. The volunteer service is now searching for additional people to ensure that cover can be provided. Heartbeat spoke to members of both critical care and theatres about the liaison roles.
“This is a new role for us and we’ll be looking for the volunteers supporting the team to make the patient experience better throughout their journey in hospital,”
Matron for critical care services at Sandwell Hospital, Amber Markham, told Heartbeat. “This role was developed following feedback from a relative,” explained Louisa Adams, Matron for theatres at Sandwell.
“The relative wasn’t able to find information on the progress of one of our patients. As a result of that, we recognised that there was a need for us to have an area where relatives can wait, for us to give some sort of timely feedback on what is happening when patients are going through emergency pathways.”
“It highlighted the need for a link between theatres and the patient’s relatives if they’re conducting an emergency surgical case,” added Rebecca O’Dwyer, Lead Nurse for critical care services and deputy director of nursing surgical services, who helped bring the case to the attention of the Trust Board.
“This change will enhance the patients’ and relatives’ experience whilst under our care.”
Amber concluded: “This is a great opportunity to expand the volunteer service as critical care, historically, is an area where volunteers would not have worked.
“It’s fantastic to open our doors to the volunteer service and we perceive this as a great initiative to improve our patient journey by utilising skills that the volunteers will bring.”
Patricia Hunt, Volunteer Service Manager told Heartbeat: “We are delighted that we have been able to act quickly in creating this role in collaboration with the staff in theatres and critical care. They recognised the need for a liaison volunteer to assist our patients’ families and friends, at what is usually a very difficult time. We have six volunteers signed up for this role already and the impact on those people closest to our patients is going to be immense.”
Interested parties can contact the volunteer service on 0121 507 4855.
Celebration day for student nurses and midwives: 30 April
To mark the end of student nurses/midwives training with the Trust, we’re inviting them to a celebration event where they will have the opportunity to meet our nursing speciality teams from across the organisation.
Note: This event is for Wolverhampton cohort 216 and BCU 1.17 students.
The celebration day will take place on Tuesday 30 April, 9am-2pm, Education Centre – conference room, Sandwell. Refreshments will also be available.
For more information or if you are a nursing speciality yet to book a stand for the event, please contact amir.ali1@nhs.net.
Jobs of the week: Capacity team secondment opportunities
Are you keen to understand how the whole hospital works to maintain safety and quality from admission to discharge?
The capacity team have 2 secondment opportunities available for internal colleagues. One is for 3 months and the other for 6 months. This is a real opportunity to gain an in-depth sight and knowledge of capacity and flow through our organisation and how clinical and non-clinical teams work collectively to deliver a service we can be proud. The secondment is offered on full time basis and the shifts are 12.5 hrs over 7 days. You will be working cross site with the support of the team with the aim of maintaining excellent patient flow throughout the site whilst maintaining patient safety and supporting the clinical/non clinical teams with any issues arising.
Expression of interest should be emailed to caroline.rennalls@nhs.net, Head of Operations and Resilience Management. Please include a short summary (no more than 200 words) of why you are interested in the secondment. You must have your line manager’s agreement before any secondment can commence.
Updated number to report faulty bed which requires engineer
If you have an issue with a faulty bed on your ward which requires an engineer to attend the ward because the bed cannot be moved, please call the drive devilbiss service line on 0845 855 0889 or 0800 037 0234. You will need the serial number from the bed as well as the make and model. The serial number can be found on the service sticker at the foot of the bed.
Note: If you have a faulty bed which can be removed from the ward, please contact portering services and ask for the bed to be replaced with a working bed (City bleep 5817 or ext. 4291, Sandwell bleep 6241).
Mental health training course for ED and inpatient colleagues: 21 May
We will be hosting a one day mental health training course which will increase awareness, improve clinical skills and help to recognise and manage people with mental ill health.
The training is aimed at ED and inpatient colleagues and will be delivered by experienced mental health clinicians and experts by experience.
The course will be hosted at the Anne Gibson boardroom, City Hospital, Tuesday 21 May, 9.30am-5pm.
To book your place and for more information, please contact andrea.russell5@nhs.net.
Recalls notice: Infant/child reduced energy defibrillation electrodes
Stryker (Physio-Control) is voluntarily recalling specific production lots of Infant/Child Reduced Energy Defibrillation Electrodes (defibrillation electrodes) produced by Cardinal Health. Approximately 14,200 electrodes have been affected.
The defibrillation electrodes are used only with LIFEPAK EXPRESS AED, LIFEPAK CR Plus AED, LIFEPAK 1000 defibrillator, or LIFEPAK 500 Biphasic AEDs with a pink connector. There have been no customer complaints reported for this issue.
The artwork on the defibrillation electrodes, as manufactured by Cardinal Health, does not meet Stryker’s specifications, and shows incorrect electrode placement for an infant. There is no issue with the performance or function of the defibrillation electrodes; this is limited to incorrect artwork on the defibrillation electrodes within the packaging. The artwork on the electrode packaging shows the correct electrode placement for an infant.
If the user incorrectly places the defibrillation electrodes it may result in ineffective energy delivery to the patient. This may result in failure to defibrillate and serious injury or death.
Please check if you have any of the affected lot numbers of the electrodes ref 11101-000016 which are listed on page 2 of the ‘Customer Notification UK PDF’ document. If you find you have some of the affected lot numbers, please isolate them and alert the procurement team of which lot numbers you have and how many so that arrangements for replacements can be made.
Unity Question Time for doctors
All our senior medical colleagues are invited to a special evening session to ask any questions they may have regarding Unity, our new electronic patient record.
Organised in the style of the BBC’s Question Time, this is the chance to get your voice heard and address the Unity team directly. David Carruthers will be moderating, while a panel of senior figures from the Unity project will be ready to deal with your questions.
Unity Question Time
Date: Tuesday 30 April
Venue: Conference Room, Education Centre, Sandwell General Hospital
Time: 5.45-8pm
To register for the event please click on this link and follow the instructions: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/unity-qa-your-concerns-addressed-tickets-59168705190
Please click here to submit any questions in advance. Audience members whose questions are selected will be informed ahead of the event so please provide a name and email address. On the night, after panel members have been given a chance to respond, the floor will then be opened up to supplementary questions.
Although this event is specifically aimed at doctors, we will be organising follow-ups for other clinical colleagues. Please keep an eye out for more information.
Chief Executive’s Message – Friday 19 April
Best wishes for Good Friday and for the whole Easter period and a huge thank you to everyone working in our community teams and in each hospital this long weekend. This is often a testing time in the midst of half terms, and of course right now we are still battling at Sandwell, our community infection outbreaks. So it is good to have everyone pulling together with some terrific examples of resilience, effort and ingenuity. I mentioned a few individuals last week and I wanted to pay tribute this week to Julie Booth and Tranprit Saluja. The infection control service is helping us to think about new ways to manage risk, and I look forward to their upcoming presentation to the Trust Board. As we look at everything with one eye on the Midland Met model, I know that leaders like Paula Gardner want us to move onto the new site with the best and most modern practices. That written, there is no substitute for our ‘OK to ask’ approach to handwashing and cross infection, so let’s make sure all of us feel able to ask of visitors, patients and all employees whether someone is complying with our policies. We do need to be constantly vigilant, and some people will be aware of a recent spread of TB from patient to employee in our Trust. Given that, let me issue “an Easter plea” for a focus on single use masks – wear them once and only once. Let’s keep isolation doors closed. Of course this relies on using side rooms with en suite to manage infection risk!
This week the Trust Board began examining, as we do every eighteen months or so, longer term risks to care and safety, and to the Trust itself. This is contained within our risk register of course, but also in a linked document called the Board Assurance Framework. It looks at issues like labour supply, not such much given Brexit, more given trends on workforce recruitment and numbers going into training. It looks too at how the NHS is developing and changing its funding models to create incentives for different things. And of course it looks at outcomes from care, not just like our mortality data, but also models of care like local care homes. When we built our 2020 Vision it was striking how important it was that we had a mind to the longer term. That remains our pitch as we work with GP partners in particular to create integrated care alliances in places and to collaborate with GPs, and their primary care networks. We are very close now to having a settled map of these PCNs which will bring some GP approaches into a more standardised form. A lot of our conversations with PCNs as a clinical leadership team are about population health. By that I mean analysing the needs of specific populations of maybe 30,000 people. We are looking particularly at who uses what services, who uses no services, and how we predict need and intervene earlier in someone’s care. Not everyone who arrives in A&E is a surprise, likewise maternity emergencies and those using community outreach teams. I don’t want the long term to become though the enemy of good ideas right now. So we are absolutely encouraging GPs to work with us on smaller scale JDI projects. If you too have ideas at the boundary of what we do and what our GP colleagues do, please get in touch with Donna Mighty or Dottie Tipton.
In six weeks’ time we will host the Trust’s annual Leadership Conference. Whilst our finances are strong, we are still going to do this at the Bethel Centre – as we bring together over 200 people to talk about 2019, 2020 and beyond. The focus this year, and also the focus for June’s Annual Report and Trust AGM (20 June – do come!) is on Learning. Unity provides a fantastic opportunity to create and share better data in our organisation. But key projects like our Schwartz Rounds are an opportunity to more reflective learning. In May the Clinical Leadership Executive will review every single serious incident from the year just ended, as we look to make sure that where there are preventable errors or lessons from one team to another, we find the best way to do that sharing. All of us will have different learning styles and preferences, and we want to ensure that our approach as a Trust, which we call welearn, caters for that diversity. We might be sharing knowledge on myConnect, in QIHD, through Heartbeat, or by sharing stories on video. With the big investment we are making in training, we will be looking to anyone funded to go to a major conference, from every profession, to make a commitment to share their learning with others inside the Trust. This mobilisation, allied to our Learning from Excellence project, modelled on the Children’s Hospital and elsewhere, is a couple of years work, which is why we are keen to get moving this summer, with our launch at the conference on 4 June.
Sooner than that, on 29 April in fact, we launch our 28-Day Unity Challenge. There has been loads of publicity around this, including its inclusion as our shared learning topic in yesterday’s QIHD. May is definitely the month when all of us need to get engaged and involved with Unity. Almost everyone has now had basic training. But the challenge is about making Unity real where you work. We have our Play System ready to use now, with prizes for the best use of the system during the challenge, and all sorts of other quizzes, tests and ideas. The calendar is out, and we are looking to see every team and department scratch off each day’s challenge. I am especially looking forward to visiting day on 15 May when many, many leaders will be out and about asking teams about Unity and understanding how far into the Trust the message and the learning has gone. We have 11 core competencies in place for every profession to master – with Making Every Contact Count a common thread. When we go live with Unity that emphasis on brief health advice will become a really central part of what we do across the Trust, as we move towards more social prescribing in the NHS, as well as traditional health promotion activities. Daily comms and Connect are the places to look for all your Unity updates. It really will pay dividends this summer to have put some time into spring preparedness.
You will undoubtedly see in your local paper this weekend, speculation over the future of our local Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG). In July a decision is due to be taken about this. In my own view there is a link of sorts between this and a series of other issues, most vitally Midland Met. What we are campaigning to ensure is that the local population who live around our sites, and rely on Midland Met, are protected and supported. West Birmingham is one of the most deprived and excluded parts of the city. Both now, and under the Heart of Birmingham PCT, we saw funds intended for Ladywood and Perry Barr spent in Solihull and elsewhere. So we want to ensure transparency and integrity in any future proposal. That future proposal is not yet written, and when it is I hope that it is clear what the benefits of change are, and we ensure coordinated services, including joining up to what we do in Midland Met. Anyone seeing echoes of referendums where options are unclear and votes are taken without certainty of options would not be too far wrong. It is surely disingenuous to ask for a change of commissioning arrangements and then assert that nothing will change. If something will change, let’s hear what that is and weigh the gains against the risks. I trust you feel that that is the right thing to say. Most local people do not know this debate is going on, so a little publicity may help to get the debate into focus.
Attached are this weeks IT stats: IT Performance Stats 18 April 2019
#hellomynameisToby
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