Monthly archives: June 2019

Red bag scheme – patient update

Thank you for supporting the red bag project in Sandwell.

It has come to light that that some colleagues are giving red bags to patients families. The red bags guide has been circulated to colleagues and instructions on where the bag needs to go.

The general principles are that the red bag remains and travels with the care home resident throughout their hospital journey. The bags are designed to be reusable and need to be returned to the originating care home after use. If a resident is discharged to a different care home, not the home they arrived from, their red bag will need to travel with them to their new destination and arrangements will be made to return the bag to the originating care home at a later date.

If a care home resident dies while in hospital, please contact the care home in the first instance to confirm the arrangements to return the bag to the home as soon as possible. If you locate a Sandwell red bag and are unsure of the return process you can contact the Sandwell red bag project team.

The red bag project team can be contacted by emailing Sandwell_Redbag@sandwell.gov.uk or calling the BCF red bag project team on 0121 569 5513.

For more details regarding the red bag scheme please click here.

Note: Please store the red bag and any contents securely until collection can be arranged and do not dispose of the bag, personal belongings or transfer documents unless specifically instructed to do so. The red bag should only be disposed of where specific infection prevention advice is received that indicates the bag cannot be reused and only with the agreement of the Sandwell red bag project team.  

Heartbeat: Leaders make promise to save lives by reducing air pollution

Chief Executive, Toby Lewis has vowed to work together with two other West Midlands organisations to reduce pollution after signing a clean air agreement. The declaration comes following an air quality summit which took place at Midland Met.

The Memorandum of Understanding was signed by Toby, Councillor Waseem Zaffar on behalf of Birmingham City Council, and Sandwell Metropolitan Borough Council’s Councillor Elaine Costigan, Cabinet Member for Public Health and Protection, to establish an Air Quality Partnership. The anticipation is that other agencies will join this collaboration.

With thousands of people regularly commuting between Sandwell and Birmingham, transport improvements and air pollution issues are cross–boundary. Therefore the partners will work together to help reduce levels of pollution in West Birmingham and Sandwell, establishing a joint stance on the Birmingham Clean Air Zone, Sandwell Air Quality Action Plan and Birmingham Clean Air Strategy.

Toby noted that around 40 per cent of acute admissions our emergency departments were due to respiratory distress. He added: “By signing this agreement we are showing our commitment to this policy which works towards providing a better environment for the people of Sandwell and West Birmingham. Over the summer, we will work with our colleagues who travel around the clean air zone to ensure they are aware of this policy and we are also looking at our own fleet of vehicles so that they are environmentally friendly. We view the changes being led by the local authorities as a public health emergency and an economic opportunity for local people.

Councillor, Elaine Costigan (Labour, Wednesbury North) said she was excited about working together in the partnership. While Councillor, Waseem Zaffar (Labour, Lozells) of Birmingham City Council and Non–Executive Director at our Trust emphasised the need to address health inequalities in Sandwell and Birmingham and outlined how the Clean Air Zone is part of the wider ‘Brum Breathes’ programme.

“The Clean Air Zone is such a simple policy, but it has a far bigger impact on Sandwell in terms of health benefits and displacement,” he said.

The Brum Breathes programme devised by Birmingham City Council and its partners sets out what is being done to tackle the problem and what else is required.

Night workers health assessment – have you completed yours?

The working time regulations require employers to offer regular health checks to night workers.

If you or any of your team work for at least three hours between the hours of 11pm and 6am, regardless of frequency, please request that they complete a night worker questionnaire and then send it back to:

Occupational health and wellbeing service, courtyard gardens, Sandwell and West Birmingham Hospitals, Lyndon, West Bromwich, B71 4HJ or alternatively email it to swbh.ohreferrals@nhs.net.

Also be sure to check out occupational health’s top tips for night work.

Drug safety notice: variable rate intravenous insulin infusion

There is currently a delay in supply of potassium chloride 10mmol (0.15 per cent) in glucose 10 per cent (500ml) that is used in the variable rate intravenous insulin infusion (VRII) regime for the treatment of diabetes, when serum potassium is between 3.6 and 5.0 mmol/l. Stock is expected to return to normal supply mid-June.

Please see Variable rate intravenous insulin infusion information sheet for details.

For more information please contact the pharmacy department on ext. 5259.

Imaging to Launch Rad Ready to improve patient journey

The imaging department is launching a new initiative across the Trust called Rad Ready.

Rad Ready essentially means that our patients are fully prepared for their imaging test so that on arrival within the department they can go straight into the scanner or x-ray room without delay.

The initiative has been developed to support the rapid turnaround times that imaging has pledged to deliver:

The checklist will ensure that the patient:

• Has had the required fluid intake
• Has had the required oral contrast
• Has an appropriate and functioning cannula in situ
• Has had any required pain relief and/or sedation
• Has an accompanying interpreter as required

The improvement team will be visiting all ward areas to familiarise colleagues with the Rad Ready concept and the pre-scan checklist. In addition the radiographers and assistants within CT will be on hand to answer queries as they arise.

Heartbeat: Janice flies the flag for procurement in the Black Country

It’s an annual awards ceremony that recognises colleagues with exceptional qualities that single them out as future procurement leaders in the NHS.

Our very own Janice Nelson, Clinical Procurement Specialist Nurse who works across our Trust, Russells Hall and Walsall Healthcare has scooped the NHS Procurement Champion award at this year’s NHS in the Midlands Excellence in Supply Awards.

Heartbeat caught up with Janice who was beaming with pride for being recognised in such a way. She said: “I am extremely humbled that the team put me forward for this award. It was a complete surprise because I didn’t find out until the short list was announced.

“I’ve been in this role for a year now and I’m enjoying every minute of it. There is a real opportunity to make a difference and work closely with clinicians to ensure we procure top quality products. Over the past few months we have worked together as a team to put in place processes and strategies to ensure we are able to engage more closely with clinicians in order to get a good outcome for our patients. This win is a reflection of the work we are doing as a team.”

Speaking of the win, Elena Slater, Head of Clinical Product Management – The Black Country Alliance thinks Janice has a bright future in procurement.

She said: “Janice is a unique future leader within clinical procurement. Not only is she a highly skilled midwife, health visitor and nurse prescriber, but she has project management experience as well which makes her perfect for this role.

“Aligning three sets of clinicians over multiple specialities is a challenge which requires confidence, assertiveness and a tough skin. Janice has managed this challenge so well in such a short time and every one she works with respects and listens to her valuable clinical judgement. Even when there are difficult conversations and meetings she always says how much she loves her job and the difference she is making.”

Congratulations Janice!

Free Windrush celebration event at Black Country Museum: 22 June

Black Country Living Museum are hosting a Windrush celebration event free for anyone wanting to attend on 22 June. Light refreshments will also be available.

To book tickets please call 0121 520 8054 or click the link below:

https://www.bclm.co.uk/events/windrush-generation/7396.htm#.XPp-rtJKjcv

Note: If you would also like to go into the museum during your visit, usual admission prices apply.

Elaine Newell recognised in Queen’s Birthday Honours List

Many colleagues will fondly remember working with Elaine Newell, both in her role as director of midwifery from 2009 and our chief nurse up until her retirement in May 2018. It is with great pleasure that we hear Elaine has been awarded an OBE for services to midwifery in the Queen’s Birthday Honours list.

On hearing the news she said: ““It is an unbelievable honour to have been recognised in this way for services to midwifery. It has been both a passion and a privilege to serve women and families in communities local to my own home. I have been fortunate to have been supported in my various midwifery roles by some wonderful teams and by a Trust which afforded opportunity and encouraged the work that I have tried to do. It is hard to put into words what this means to myself and my family who have always been so supportive, but I am incredibly proud.”

Joining the Trust as head of midwifery in 2009, Elaine faced a multitude of challenges including poor patient experience, concerns over care quality, and issues with recruitment and retention which she faced with equanimity, as she led maternity services into an award winning service. Against a background of social deprivation Elaine sought to provide women the absolute belief that they deserve the very best care at what is both an anxious and exciting time as they approach motherhood. She created specialised midwifery roles in bereavement, screening, diabetes and infant feeding, and made patient safety the number one priority for all her colleagues.

The CQC gave maternity services a good rating in all categories under her leadership, and her service was awarded the Midwifery Award for Promoting Natural Birth by the Royal college of Midwives in 2013, and achieved the Baby Friendly initiative from UNICEF in 2014.

Toby Lewis, Chief Executive commented: “I am absolutely delighted to see Elaine’s immense contribution to midwifery, and to professional leadership at the Trust, recognised nationally.  The huge improvement in maternity care under Elaine’s leadership is an important legacy, and the work in recent years to halve stillbirths in our Trust owes much to her determination as part of a multi-professional team.  Elaine’s personal example has inspired many staff who still work with us, and I know that this honour will excite those colleagues and show what can be achieved in Sandwell and West Birmingham.”

Chief Executive’s Message – Friday 7 June

Yesterday the Board met and, in what may have been the last meeting in the Anne Gibson Boardroom before that building closes in the coming winter, we agreed to appoint Balfour Beatty as the contractor to finish Midland Met. The decision needs confirmation over the coming six weeks through Whitehall. On Tuesday our Leadership Conference heard from Paul Faulkner, Chief Executive of the Greater Birmingham Chamber of Commerce, about the future of the city as we move towards HS2, the Commonwealth Games (with its regeneration of Perry Barr) and about the central role he foresaw for the Midland Met in the story of the city’s renaissance over the next decade. It was an inspiring idea and one we want to make a reality, but a reality that tackles poverty and exclusion from Rolfe Street to Dudley Road. That is why we are working with partners on a masterplan for investment, transport and regeneration across that landscape.

Common to the Board meeting and to the Leadership Conference was a continued focus on the welearn programme. There is a never event to investigate in general surgery. But the programme launched on Tuesday also has learning from excellence at its heart, and a much greater emphasis for our clinical audit and effectiveness function. Over coming months we want to make sure that we are sharing what works best in our organisation and system. That is why it is so important that we get face to face communication in place at a local level, and why new communication ideas like the surgical services group WebEx, and the Medicine Matters newsletter from Julie Thompson, Chetan Varma and Beth Hughes, matter very much. At the top of this page is a graphic illustrating the sheer scale of learning that could come from the issues you already highlight in our Trust – with a particular shout out to everyone reporting near misses, our QIHD shared topic from May.

We now have the agreements we need to confirm that go-live for Unity will happen from 23 September. I attach a one page brief on the implications of that decision, including for annual and study leave. We have much to do still to be ready – and our super users are getting trained now for their vital support role.  From Monday the current upgrade to Unity to ensure that everything is in place ready for go-live will be complete. Planned maintenance on the Play System is also complete so please use it to safely practise different scenarios and workflows. Over 500 more computers and devices arrive in early August. Meanwhile our new Pulse VPN is imminent and we are even trialling a possible route to single sign on, to replace multiple log-ins. We all “get” that Unity is not a technology project, it’s a safety and a quality project, but we know too that tech helps and we are working to get the best. That is why yesterday we green-lighted an artificial intelligence partnership in imaging – fresh from their starring role in Heartbeat a month ago, the team delivered 87 per cent of reports in less than four weeks from referral in May: By far our best figures ever. Many congratulations.

After the Trust Board, the whole leadership team, including our group directors, walked the current smoking shelters and informal cigarette hangouts of the City site. Phil Foley, who is leading the implementation of estate change, and Santokh Sagoo from the security team were our guides. We spoke with patients and visitors who were smoking. And with members of our gardening and estates team who spend many hours sweeping up the debris from smoking each day. When we go live, in addition to our wardens, security team, and enforcement team, we will also have senior leaders out and about on shift challenging any non-compliance. With security cameras, and more being installed, we should be able to photograph those breaching our new arrangements. We will not be escorting either patients or staff off site, day or night, to smoke: Instead our focus in on nicotine replacement at the bedside and on vaping alternatives for those outside. I still hear tales of ‘reputational damage’ from street smoking at our gates. I hope you do not choose to do that but to be clear the damage on which we are focused is the health impact for you and others. Our breaks guidance is attached.  Please take a look at it. It replaces any informal understandings that exist today – and it is clear there is no such thing as a ‘fag break’.

Next month most of our Board meeting will be devoted to children and young people. One in six of the patient contacts we have as a Trust are with people under 18. We care for some of the youngest communities in the country. And you know that our community children’s services are rated as Outstanding by the CQC. With that has come the reintegration of Sandwell’s school nursing into our Trust. We want to look at how services are shaping up, not just for the youngest children we look after, whose long term health outcomes can be profoundly influenced by their early years, but also at our transitional arrangements for teenagers and young people moving from designated paediatric services into adult ones. Paula Gardner, our chief nurse, chairs the Children and Young People’s Board, which looks at these issues across all our services, and the role of the CYP Champion, inaugurally filled by Chizo Agwu over the last two years, will be advertised soon, given Chizu’s promotion to be one of our deputy medical directors, with a focus on our vital quality plan. I am really excited by the emphasis that the Board has chosen to place on younger people over the next couple of years – after all we have said for a while that the measure of success with Midland Met is whether it inspires local school children to think of science and care as their future and their career.

Attached are this week’s IT stats: IT Performance Stats 7 June 2019

#hellomynameisToby

SWBH discounts available this June

We’re offering additional discounts throughout June via the Hapi platform for all colleagues.

These include:

• Halfords – 10 June 7 days an additional 2 per cent = (e-voucher)
• Primark – 17 June 7 days an additional 2 per cent = (e-voucher)
• The Dinning out Card – 24 June for 7 days an additional 2 per cent = (e-voucher)
• Entertainer at 9 per cent
• The White Company at 8 per cent
• Kids Pass (2 months) at £4.50
• Sport Pass (1 month) at £22.50
• Sports Pass (1 week) at £9
• Entertainment Pass (2 months) at £9

For more information regarding staff benefits on offer please contact amir.ali1@nhs.net.