Monthly archives: August 2019
Network Maintenance – Wi-Fi Downtime Tuesday evening
We will be performing essential maintenance works on the network on Tuesday 13 August 2019 between 10pm and 11pm which will cause all Trust WiFi to be unavailable for the duration.
These maintenance steps are to enable improvements across the wireless network throughout the Trust in the run up to Unity.
Thank you for your patience.
Christian prayer meeting every Tuesday at 8am
Our chaplaincy team will be hosting a Christian prayer meeting every Tuesday, with the first meeting starting this Tuesday. The meeting will be held at City chapel from 8am – 9am. All are welcome to attend. For more information please call ext. 3552.
Launching the Managers’ Code of Conduct
Today we are launching the Managers’ Code of Conduct. This sets expectations of everyone who manages someone or leads a project. These roles come with responsibility, power and influence, and we want to ensure that the way in which that is deployed is fair and reasonable.
The code has been developed after extensive consultation and engagement over the last three months with well over 97% of respondents indicating that they saw value in its launch. Material to showcase how the Code will be used is being issued through the daily bulletin and on Connect. It is explicitly the intention of the Code to support rapid feedback to individuals about their positive and less positive behaviours. Ordinarily informal resolution of concerns would be the route chosen.
The Code is trying to help us to set, or reset, some norms about how we treat one another.
It is issued consistent with the all employee charter that the Trust launched over five years ago which remains an obligation of all of us.
Managers in our organisation should:
- Seek to actively listen to others’ views, especially from those who disagree
- Be honest about what has to happen, and own that direction and intention
- Focus most attention on outcomes and objectives, especially those in our 2020 vision and associated plans as we work to improve quality and ensure safety
- Help others to choose well between priorities when we have more work to do than can be done at a given time
- Strive to speak well of all teams within the Trust and wider system, and all individuals with whom we work
- Make sure that others understand what they are being asked to do and why, and encourage questions and suggestions
We want to ensure that managers in our Trust do not:
- Ignore or neglect patient or workforce safety under any circumstances
- Create or tolerate an atmosphere of anxiety, fear, bullying or intimidation
- Discourage anyone from Speaking Up to anyone else
- Make or ignore disparaging comments about others
Download the Managers’ Code of Conduct here
Chief Executive’s Message – Friday 9 August
The last few days have seen major announcements about restored NHS capital funding, as well as hints of progress on pensions! We expect that they will once again allow us to press ahead with projects we have in hand, with schemes like the major investment in Neonatal services at City now well advanced, and enabling works underway for the GP practice at Sandwell. These announcements are separate to the Midland Met contract which is in the latter throes of government approval, having been agreed by NHS Improvement.
One of the many architects of our work on long term finance, on new estates, and on patient quality, was Tony Waite. Tony sadly passed away earlier this week in his beloved Yorkshire. I know that he remained fiercely proud of this organisation, clinically and in terms of our ambitious vision. Tony will be missed in all the organisations he served over a career with more than thirty years as a director, including his five years with us. Thank you to everyone who has offered support and condolences to those most affected by this unexpected news, and we will continue to try and deliver that 2020 Vision – reporting back next year to local residents as we promised we would. Trust was such an important part of how Tony worked, and who he was, and I know he would want to try and build even more confidence from local people in the honesty with which we deliver change and improve care.
More doctors in training joined us this week, with some staying on from FY1 rotations. I hope very much that you are being made to feel welcome. In coming weeks we hope to put in IT, through Unity, which makes working here smoother and easier, and in particular means that prescribing will become electronically enabled. One of the key steps to Unity Go Live is to tackle the backlog of unacknowledged results, for imaging, which sit in our system. Chetan Varma, for medicine, and Tina Robinson, for surgery, presented their plans to do over the next six weeks to last week’s Board meeting. We have over 800 red flag results still in our system, and have made it clear since April that we need to go over to Unity with our recent backlog largely cleared and with each specialty and team having a very clear process, not less than weekly, to clear all acknowledgements.
I have mentioned a couple of times here, and the latest Heartbeat also features, our new Tap & Go IT login. This product gives you rapid access to Unity, and from 2020 single sign on to a variety of Trust IT systems. By this time next week we will have material out letting you know how to access the new facilities, which requires for some users a small chip addition to your staff access card. In many areas the team will come to your patch to get this installed before Unity Go Live. Our Access Fairs will also be a way to get yourself ready, and details of those are pretty much everywhere!
Last week we started a new feedback loop from our frontline shift leaders in nursing on staff shortages and clinical risk. We still have vacancies and sickness and those cause shifts where our staffing numbers fall below those agreed by the Board. Even as we tackle sickness rates, and press ahead with over 700 job offers, we need to remain focused on the ways we mitigate risk when we are short-staffed. At the same time, we are re-signing off our approach to Focused Care trust-wide so that the 10-20 patients at any given time we may need enhanced help do get that. Paula Gardner and I will report back to the Board at the end of August on the new data, which is not intended to be onerous. There is lots to learn between teams from how individuals take mitigating steps in leading a shift, and we need to learn for when that arises, even as we make great progress reducing its likelihood. We also want to hear clearly the voice of those having to manage overnight or out of hours about what really happens and how it feels.
Managing risk in any large organisation, especially healthcare perhaps, comes with complexity. As individuals we rate risk differently. Some inclined to over-estimate, some to under-rate. That is why we have systems to try and tackle risk assessments and get a few pairs of eyes looking at issues, risks, and solutions together. Of course at the same time we engage in managerial behaviours which can on occasion either ask people to call out risks, or imply that doing so is somehow ‘unhelpful’. We can only manage and mitigate what we know and we can only manage from truth, so my own view is that it is helpful to speak up. The Managers’ Code of Conduct, the final text of which is attached, goes live Monday with some support material on Connect and in our bulletin. The Code has benefitted from your feedback, and is a simple list of ten norms that we want to make our own. That will only happen if we use the Code, and use it to give feedback when behaviours are really helpful, and likewise when someone’s approach may cause inadvertent or explicit harm.
One feature of the Code of Conduct, which I personally think is important, is the need to improve consistently how we articulate why we are doing something or asking for something. On occasion I hear versions of ‘we’re doing it because we were told to’, ‘because Toby says so’, or ‘the commissioner wants it’. All of us tend to work best when we know why we are being asked for extra or different work and we want to become smarter as a Trust is asking for, and explaining, why something is going to change. Taking that step tends to mean we understand what is needed better, and may adapt the request to improve it further. Try it with Unity, as you launch into your team simulations: Are you sure you know why that approach to handover or board rounds is the one?
Attached are this week’s IT stats: IT Performance Stats 9 August 2019
#hellomynameisToby
Chief Executive’s Message – Friday 9 August
The last few days have seen major announcements about restored NHS capital funding, as well as hints of progress on pensions! We expect that they will once again allow us …
Workplace stress management courses available
Workplace stress management is a three hour session which will give people a self-management toolbox of skills to enable individuals to reduce their stress levels in the workplace, and building resilience within this. The sessions include looking at what stress actually is and identifying your own triggers for stress. It also looks at the self help people can do for themselves to reduce their stress levels, whilst building on their resilience. This includes practical examples of self-help such as relaxation and breathing techniques. Once participants have established self-help for stress, it would be then turned to how we can manage in the workplace.
Date: Tuesday 27 August
Venue: Surgical Skills Room, Postgraduate Centre, City Hospital
Time: 1.30pm – 4.30pm
For more information and to book on this course, please contact Emma Williams on ext. 3849 or alternatively by email at emma.williams21@nhs.net.
Perfect Week in theatres
As you may be aware, this week Sandwell theatres are running Perfect Week.
The programme is taking place in our elective orthopaedic theatres and is about working together as a multidisciplinary team to improve our patient’s surgical journey.
You can find out more about the programme by clicking here.
Be sure to check out this video featuring Vishal Paringe, consultant trauma and orthopaedics talking about the benefits of Perfect Week for patients and how the programme can improve the patient journey without comprising safety.
How Unity will impact integrated care – occupational therapy
Unity will help to transform the way we share data across acute and community settings. It will mean that colleagues have the same comprehensive view of our patient records, enabling them to provide better and safer care.
Be sure to check out this video by Sharon Graham-Scott and Hannah Downey, occupational therapists in the Own Bed Instead team, who share their view of how Unity will impact integrated care.
Getting ready for go-live – Unity engagement events for doctors
Senior doctors who want to find out more about Unity, including their responsibilities and what’s happening during go-live and beyond, are encouraged to attend one of the two engagement events taking place at the start of September.
There will be presentations about the clinical safety case, go-live plan and IT, as well as the chance to ask any questions you may have regarding our new electronic patient record.
Several senior figures from the Unity project team will be on hand to address your queries. Refreshments will be available.
| Date | Location | Time |
| Monday 2 September | Hayward Lecture Theatre, Postgraduate Centre, City Hospital | 5.30pm – 8pm |
| Tuesday 3 September | Conference Room, Education Centre, Sandwell General Hospital | 5.30pm – 8pm |
With only a few weeks left until go-live, if you have any questions about Unity then now’s the time to ask. You can also find out more about what to expect as we switch over to the new system and how to ensure that you’re fully prepared for it.
For more information on Unity, and getting ready for go-live, please visit Connect or email swbh.unity.queries@nhs.net.
Perfect Week: Theatres
The Perfect Week is a national initiative designed by the Emergency Care Intensive Support team (ECIST) to help us improve patient experience and our performance.
The Trust has adapted the initiative to run a perfect week across our elective orthopaedic pathways. During this week, a number of changes are being tested in our theatres, wards and departments that will improve patient outcomes, experience and overall productivity. In collaboration with surgeons, anaesthetists, ward colleagues, theatre and booking teams we have developed a theatre safer flow bundle to support our service improvement work:
- Scheduling – All lists will be optimised and patients will be given a date for surgery within 14 weeks. Lists will be booked to the production plan activity at least 4 weeks in advance giving time to prepare equipment and other enabling support e.g. anaesthetic pre-assessment before the day of surgery
- Achieve safer staffing – Ensuring theatre teams have the right amount of colleagues, with the right skills in the right place at the right time. Safer staffing will be monitored daily at 8.40am at team brief. Team rotas will be visible 4 weeks in advance so the multi professional team know who they are scheduled to work with.
- Flow – An average 15 minute turnaround time per patient per list (the completion of one surgical procedure and the start of the next)
- Early Starts – Every list will have an identified Golden (first) patient,
- Resources – No patient will experience an avoidable on the day cancellation due to lack of equipment, staff or capacity.
We have established a command structure to support rapid escalation and resolution. The Perfect Week team consists of:
- The theatre team –surgeons, anaesthetists, theatres, ward colleagues and the Trust scheduling team
- Operational leads for each theatre to support with the identification and resolution of issues/delays and constraints
- The group surgical service leads are supporting with constraints that cannot be mitigated locally and monitoring compliance against the Theatre SAFER flow bundle across the week
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