Monthly archives: August 2019
Work continues to extend neonatal unit
The project to extend the neonatal unit at City Hospital continues meaning the unit will be relocating to D16 and M1 from 29 August. Whilst there, the neonatal unit will be known by its geographical location: NNU on D16 and NNU on M1.
Unfortunately, due to the works, a number of visitor car park spaces will be out of action.
If you feel this move could impact your service or for more information, please contact either Jenny Cadwallader-Hunt or Sally Haycox on the neonatal unit ext. 5100.
We apologise for the inconvenience this may cause.
Our Trust is smokefree
Our Trust has now been smokefree for 7 weeks. We support vaping on our grounds, but not in our buildings or entrances.
It is our collective responsibility to ensure that people do not smoke anywhere on our sites, and in this we will be supported by dedicated smoking wardens who will be patrolling our sites, and by an external company who will police our ban through an on the ground presence backed up by CCTV. The maximum ban for anyone caught smoking on site is £50, and this includes smoking in cars on our premises. Colleagues who receive three fines will be subject to disciplinary procedure.
Vaping will be allowed outside, and as the smoking shelters come down we will retain a small number which will be converted into vaping shelters. These shelters will be monitored by CCTV to ensure they are not used for smoking.
We are following Public Health England guidelines in being supportive of vaping as a route to cut down or quit smoking.
Two vaping shops are now open at City (main spine, ground floor) and Sandwell (outpatients area) run by ECigWizard, where colleagues will be able to get advice about vaping products and purchase them. We are also making Nicotine Replacement Therapy widely available, so patients will be able to access it through clinical colleagues on our wards and from our pharmacy department.
Be sure to check out this short video featuring Santokh Sagoo, Security Manager about approaching smokers and CCTV in operation across our site regarding going smokefree.
Sustainability Garden Party at City Hospital: 29 August
It’s our annual Sustainability Garden Party is taking place tomorrow (Thursday 29 August) at City Hospital Memorial Gardens from 10am – 2pm).
Help us celebrate our achievements and find out how we plan to reduce our impact on the environment – reducing energy, waste, water and travelling more sustainably. We can all make small changes that collectively have a big impact.
There will be refreshments, prizes, a smoothie bike, tips to save energy, info on where our waste goes, discounts on travel, pancakes and many more. Please bring your own mug/drinking bottle to help us save waste.
For more information please contact Fran Silcocks (Francesca.silcocks@nhs.net).
Practise your UniTeam competencies throughout August
The UniTeam competencies are the next step on from the individual competency assessment, and involve working together to replicate your everyday practice in Unity. They will support clinical teams to progress from an awareness of Unity to an understanding of how it will work in reality.
If you still haven’t completed your Unity – it’s all about U checklist demonstrating 100 per cent compliance with the requirements for your role then please do so. Using the Play System and e-learning, as well as regularly practising your UniTeam competencies, will help to address any gaps in your knowledge.
There are 10 core competencies within UniTeam. Some teams may need all 10 but most are likely to require a selection that reflects how they will use Unity in their areas. Your team lead, in most cases the ward manager or department manager, will be able to clarify which ones are relevant to you.
Teams are expected to practise the relevant competencies at least five times using the Play System. The number of practices needs to be captured and entered into the form on Connect by the team lead.
During this week members of the Unity support team will continue to visit clinical areas to observe that your team can effectively carry out the competencies you have been practising. By the end of August all teams will have received feedback and will be ready for Unity to go live.
There are videos depicting the competencies on Connect to help your teams through the process. Please be aware that there’s plenty of other support, including standard operating procedures and quick reference guides, available too.
For more information about the UniTeam competencies, please contact the learning and development team on swbh.landd@nhs.net.
How Unity will make a difference to you – theatres
Unity will transform the way that we care for our patients. In the video below, Ashley Whalley, advanced theatre practitioner, explains the difference it will make in his area.
For more information about Unity, and what to expect during go-live, please visit Connect or email swbh.unity.queries@nhs.net.
SWB Brexit Bulletin – 23 August 2019
With the change in government leadership and the 31 October on the horizon we are restarting our Brexit bulletin to bring you up to speed on the latest guidance in relation to Brexit and its impact on healthcare and the NHS. Our Trust will continue to ensure we have robust arrangements in place so that we are best prepared for the UK’s departure from the European Union.
Additional help for UK innovation and research post-Brexit
The Government has pledged further support for UK researchers and businesses post-Brexit, including providing additional funding to support Horizon 2020 projects beyond 2020 and a change to immigration rules to continue to attract international science and research talent after the UK leaves the EU. Further information is available from UK Research and Innovation
Continuity of medicines’ supply
The Government has announced on 26th June that it will be continuing with its approach to continuity of medicines’ supply, involving a range of activities including warehousing, buffer stocks and procurement for extra ferry capacity, including an express freight service for medicines and medical products. It has also written to the medicines and medical devices industries providing further information on its plans to minimise medicines’ disruption.
NHS organisations have been written to by the national team to ask us to ensure we have a key team in place to oversee EU Exit preparations. We expect that the national team will check on our readiness at the end of August. If you have questions or concerns please contact Chief Executive, Toby Lewis, who is our Senior Responsible Officer for Brexit on tobylewis@nhs.net
Overseas visitors
Both sides in the Brexit negotiations have agreed in principle to preserve reciprocal health care rights until the end of a transition period (awaiting confirmation of this time limit), at least for those citizens already residing in another EU country. However, until the final outcome of the talks is known, uncertainty remains about the future. Estimates of the number of people this involves differ among the available sources. However, it has been suggested that there are around 1 million British migrants living in other EU countries, compared with around 3 million EU migrants living in the UK.UK citizens living abroad tend to be older, and therefore more likely to use health and care services, than EU citizens living in the UK. Where significant numbers of UK citizens to return to the UK this would have implications for health and care services. https://www.gov.uk/guidance/healthcare-for-eu-and-efta-citizens-visiting-the-uk
In a no-deal scenario, the government will seek to protect current reciprocal healthcare rights through transitional bilateral agreements with other member states, which would include whether or how residents who are citizens of other states would be charged for services. However, there is no certainty on this so the current position is that the European Health Insurance Card (EHIC) will no longer be valid so British citizens travelling to the EU would need to take out private travel insurance. In the same way EU citizens travelling to the UK will become chargeable after 31 October (Brexit day) and would need to take out private travel insurance.
Without an arrangement similar to the EHIC, costs will transfer to the individual – people travelling abroad in the EU would need to take out private travel insurance in the same way as they would when travelling outside the EU. The extent of the impact on the health and care system of UK citizens living abroad returning to the UK in the event of no deal is uncertain and requires further modelling. The advice from the Department of Health and Social Care is that we continue with the current process and any changes will be notified to all trusts.
Star of the week – Jane Ferguson, Ward Clerk, Lyndon 5
Congratulations to Jane Ferguson, Ward Clerk on Lyndon 5 who is this weeks Star of the Week!
Jane was nominated for the award by her colleague Ward Sister Vikki Howard who wanted to recognise the Jane for her professionalism and ‘can do’ attitude.
Nominating Jane for the award, Vikki wrote, “This week Jane has had two compliments via the purple phone from visitors to the ward.
Jane has also taken the lead for Unity on the ward keeping a record of staff training and assisting colleagues to complete their all about you document and log into the play domain. Well Done Jane, keep up your enthusiasm.
Chief Executive’s Message – Friday 23 August
I wrote to everyone who works in our Trust earlier this week about Unity. We have work to do to be ready for go-live, and the Board will determine on 5 September which of two dates will be used. The expectation remains that we will go live over the weekend of 21 and 22 September. To support that ‘planned care’ volumes will be reduced by 40 per cent for ten days, and staffing levels in Gold and Silver teams will be increased over the same period. In addition, floorwalkers, super users and digital champions will be available to help. For the avoidance of doubt, given misinformation, reduced workload in that ten day period will not need to be “repaid” – our Trust plan for the year took Unity implementation into account.
Going live depends on everyone who needs CapMan training completing it by the end of August. If you are one of the 650 people who is still outstanding please log on and get that done. 6% of our Unity All About U competencies are not yet signed off, and Paula Gardner and David Carruthers are now personally contacting those individuals who are outliers. Thank you to the vast majority of colleagues who have completed this checklist. 68 out of 118 teams have made great progress with the UniTeam simulation work – and there is still time to catch up. This makes sure that we are not using Unity together for the first time on the morning of go-live. It is this simulation work that we need to focus on through September, which is why we need other competencies and training finished in August.
At the very start of September, three big things happen. Firstly every new device will be in place and we will be conducting a mass test of all of those, including our printers, over the first weekend of the month. Secondly, the final version of the Unity product will return from Cerner, complete with all the changes agreed with our clinicians, including those in neonatal intensive care. Finally, thirdly, the Tap & Go product which allows rapid log in to the Unity system will be available. It is this that in 2020 we will develop as a single sign on product for other applications.
I am very aware that there is a constructive anxiety about go-live which we will all share. Improving IT at the Trust is a shared priority, but the act of improving it creates new risks and challenges. If you do have anxieties about Unity do please raise them with me. Connect has an extraordinary amount of training and support material on it, but nonetheless, we need to help individuals to be ready. That is why we will have 250 licences running now for the Play System to give more people through September chance to practice. Our Access Fairs and other events advertised through the bulletin give you various types of opportunity to ask questions and get informed before the big day.
Beyond the world of Unity much else goes on. Over the next two weeks for example we have:
- Our Sustainability Garden Party in Thursday’s sunshine – details in the bulletin
- Our cricket match against local GPs, on Sunday 8 September – again in sunshine!
- The voting starts for our Star Awards finalists in ten days’ time – who is your Team of the Year?
- New CT scanners are being delivered to the City site as we continue to invest in imaging, and facilitate the reconfiguration of respiratory medicine to that site later this winter
- Additional lighting goes into our New Square car park, as we get ready for safe use over the winter months
- Building work starts on the Sandwell GP practice in Lower Lyndon which opens in 2020
- Recruitment efforts continue as we look to fill our shifts and create more stable teams. Theatres are pictured but I know we have over 700 job offers made and more to come.
- Our pilot Sleep project gets started in key wards, as we look to make a really important set of changes for patient experience, but also direct health gain, tracking 7 hours of good sleep!
- We expect the Midland Met Final Business Case to move from DHSC to Treasury, as we look to sign a contract with Balfour Beatty in the next two months
- The first learning set for our Pioneer teams takes place next Wednesday, looking at how we are improving engagement and involvement in frontline teams across our Trust.
Thank you to everyone for your hard work, and perhaps especially to our cleaning and infection control teams as we prepare for the external inspection in October, and the Board’s review of infection control when we meet at Rowley Regis on 5 September. Whether it is making sure we are cleaning drip stands, or using the Five Moments well, we need to raise our Trust as a whole to the standard of our best and I am sure that Julie Booth and Taran Saluja will help us to do just that – no pressure!
Attached are this week’s IT stats: IT Performance Stats 23 August 2019
This week’s Brexit Bulletin: SWB Brexit Bulletin – 23 August 2019
#hellomynameisToby
Unity super user training – book your place
Super users are colleagues who will be an extension of the Unity support team at go-live and will have an enhanced end-to-end knowledge of the system. They are a step above digital champions.
Training for super users will comprise the following:
- Both parts of digital champions training (1.5 days) – please see the digital champions section of Connect for more information and links to book this training
- Three further individual training days looking at patient journeys in inpatient, outpatient, ED and BMEC Each super user should attend the sessions applicable to their areas. Please see Connect for high-level details of what is included in the individual patient journey sessions (3 days)
- Half-day CAPMAN course (where applicable to role/area supported)
- Total = 5 days
Russell Stanton, clinical lead podiatrist, is one of many colleagues to have completed their super user training. He said: “It was really helpful being able to see the processes, the similarities and differences of the different roles.
“It gave you a much better view of the system and the patient journey. The trainers all had a wealth of tips and extra information they were able to share so I’m definitely feeling a lot more confident after my super user training.”
Separate arrangements are being made with maternity, pathology, NICU, imaging, porters and CNPs. Please contact swbh.unity-champions@nhs.net to discuss alternative arrangements or if you have any queries about super user training. For more information and links to book super user training, please visit Connect.
Heartbeat: Top tips for teeth as Trust takes to the community
Our student health visitors recently took over Boots in Cape Hill all in an effort to remind pre-school children the importance of brushing teeth.
The health visitors encouraged parents of children under the age of five to try their dental products and advised them on the benefits of cleaning teeth from a young age. They also answered questions parents had around dental healthcare and aided parents who needed signposting to their local dentist.
Denise Darbyshire, Student Health Visitor was part of the team at the chemist on the day. She said: “It was fulfilling to be able to educate so many parents around dental healthcare in Smethwick on an array of different topics from being smart with sugar, when to see the dentist, when and more importantly how often to brush and the quantity of toothpaste necessary for young children.”
According to the Royal College of Surgeons, it’s estimated that around 80 per cent of 1-2 year old children haven’t visited a dentist in 12 months. Sarah Hibbert, Student Health Visitor believes such a shocking statistic should not exist in 2019 and hopes the awareness event they hosted can help reduce this figure.
She said: “If by us hosting this promotion day helps just a few children have better quality of teeth through their childhood and adulthood then it will have been worthwhile. Whether it’s frequency of trips to the dentist or even just brushing teeth twice a day, every little bit counts towards improving oral hygiene and preserving the quality of teeth into adulthood.”
Tooth decay is one of the most common reasons children aged 5-9 are admitted to hospital. Sarah added: “Sugary food and drinks cause bacteria on teeth to produce harmful acid that rots them and can lead to painful toothaches. However, even swapping sugary drinks out of a child’s daily diet for plain water or even lower fat milks could help prevent tooth decay long term.”
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