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Monthly archives: January 2020

Introduction to Mindfulness Workshop

 

Does it every feel like your mind is constantly full of worries of the future, or concerns of the past?

Mindfulness is a relaxation and coping strategy centred on bringing our attention back to our thoughts, feelings and sensations in the present moment in a non-judgemental way.  Mindfulness is an effective way of managing feelings of anxiety, stress, depression and low mood. This is a three hour workshop which will help you understand and implement the mindfulness practice.

Date: Thursday 27 February 2020
Venue: Surgical Skills Room, Postgrad, City Hospital
Time: 10am – 1pm

To book onto any of the workshops please contact Jatinder Sekhon or Emma Williams on 0121 507 3306 option 4. Other dates, sessions and venues are available.

Drug Safety Notice – Product shortage – Calcium Chloride Injections

 

Calcium chloride 10 mmol in 10 ml and 5 mmol in 5 ml ampoules for injection and the 10% pre filled syringes are out of stock until mid-March 2020. The ampoules are licensed for use as an intravenous injection or infusion for the treatment of hypocalcaemia or electrolyte imbalance. They are also used in some settings in the management of severe acute hyperkalaemia. The pre-filled syringes 10% (6.8 mmol in 10 ml) are licensed for use in cardio-pulmonary resuscitation, as well as the treatment of hypocalcaemia and calcium deficiency states.

Actions:

  • Any remaining stock of pre-filled syringes of calcium chloride in clinical areas must be reserved for use in Resus. Area leads to check stock of pre-filled syringes and reserve.
  • There may be certain patients, e.g. in critical care, or severe liver impairment; for whom the increased volume of gluconate or the time taken to infuse this additional volume may be problematic. Prioritise remaining stock of calcium chloride for this group.
  • Review the content of crash boxes and antidote stock in line with product availability locally. Contact the Pharmacy department for stock supplies. Stock lists have been updated to include calcium gluconate where calcium chloride is stocked.
  • Clinical leads and area managers to communicate the content of this notice amongst local teams to highlight the difference in calcium content of calcium gluconate and recommendations for dosing.
  • Further advice and dose comparative table here: https://www.sps.nhs.uk/articles/shortage-of-calcium-chloride-injection-10-millimoles-in-10-ml-and-5millimoles-in-5ml-ampoules/

Please read the attached Drug Safety notice for further information on alternative agents and management options.

Drug Safety Notice – Calcium chloride 02-0120

Winscribe will be unavailable over the weekend of the 31 January

 

Winscribe will not be available from  7pm Friday 31 January until 7am Monday 3 February. We are upgrading the system with a new speech engine. Please make sure you revert to your Group Business Continuity Plans for dictation for clinics being held over this weekend.

The new product will be known as Dragon Medical Workflow Manager ( DMWM).

Heartbeat needs your input

 

As we get set to make Heartbeat an online magazine available via our digital platforms we’re seeking your opinions to ensure we deliver a magazine that you love to read and engage with.
This is YOUR Trust magazine, a way for you to keep up to date with all the latest news from across our organisation wherever you are.

We’re currently seeking views from our readers. We very much want the overhauled
Heartbeat to be a reflection of what you want to see and read so your feedback will be vital to the look and feel of the magazine.

We’d like you to complete a short survey to get your views on Heartbeat as it stands. This will help us to consider any changes before we go live.

To take part in the survey visit www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/GLZV998

Chief Executive’s Message – Friday 24 January

 

Another week and another Star. Hot off the heels of Caroline Ndachangedzwa last week, this week’s winner is Nikki Smith.

Last weekend, I enjoyed giving a little help to our latest recruitment event, held in the Birmingham Treatment Centre. Most areas of nursing were represented in the market-place trying to persuade attendees to pick them. There were some smart ideas about how to get people to choose us – driving lessons for district nurses for instance, and better language qualification support for registered nurses from abroad working here as HCAs. In fact the majority of people who came along to the event were looking to join us as HCAs, or as new nursing associates. The Trust is determined to create a simple nursing ladder, or escalator, that moves people from band 2 to band 3 based on their skills against our checklist, and supports people to join the associate programme, where we have room for 150 enrolees. During February we will launch some video material explaining this approach and busting a few myths and rumours in the process. I really hope we end March 2020 with fewer than 600 vacancies in all disciplines and roles here, having started the year above 1,100. Not where we want to be, but huge progress made.

Of course the implication of driving down vacancies and improving recruitment, tackling turnover and retention is twofold: First it helps us to address agency spend – we will end March having spent about £16m through agencies. Some of that went to people who worked a shift but around 25% will have gone into overhead. We have not regressed to Thornberry but we still have room to improve.  And second with better staffing comes time to train. The Clinical Leadership Executive on Tuesday explored ideas about how we ensure that we roster training time, as well as time to do the kind of improvement roles as practitioners and champions that many staff want to take within their department or ward. Time to learn is definitely something we want to be better at structuring and funding than in the past, and to stand out from other NHS organisations for getting this right.

Quality Improvement Half Days remain our biggest investment in learning right now. In 2020-2021 some deliberately coincide with primary care’s Protected Learning Time locally. The dates are out now – (2020-21 QIHD Dates).  Once again we decided that mornings and afternoons make sense, and avoided Mondays. These decisions can never please everyone but well over 1,500 people continue to use this valuable four hours to talk through how to improve services for patients and for one another. For clinical leaders and senior managers First Friday will also re-start in March – look out for details in coming weeks in the communications bulletin and here. This is our chance to make sure we look-see-listen. No need to publish a schedule. It’s the first Friday each month.

Car parking remains the largest single ‘postbag’ issue I see. I know that you know we are spending £10m to get this right. But in the meantime worth highlighting that free parking is available at New Square a few moments’ walk from Sandwell. We cannot guarantee you a parking space on any site.  That is why we have invested in public transport alternatives, the car share app, and more inter site shuttles to help manage in-day travel when spaces are rarely available. We do listen, so we are looking at the late shift car park hours at City, and making sure we create something similar at Sandwell. But if you do get a Parking Charge Notice (PCN) please pay it, or use the staff-led appeals process. Publicity or letters to me will make no difference to that process, which just looks at whether you have a case for being unfairly treated. Sadly if you do not pay your PCN, and have no valid appeal, in turn your car park access will be given to someone else.

When talking to local people about Midland Met, car parking often comes up. We will need to work hard to make sure neighbouring streets are not ours to park in. Of course, the bus routes into the site will help, and I am pleased there are refurbishment plans for Rolfe Street too. You may or may not know that the local canal very much connects key places in our patch; as a walk-way, a cycle path, and potentially as a space for water taxis. The Canal and Rivers Trust are working with us, given the lack of locks between the city centre and Smethwick, and the chance to re-develop the water’s edge from the new hospital down to the towpaths. All of this comes hot on the heels of the city’s radical Transport Plan for Birmingham. That confirms the introduction of the Clean Air Zone, or CAZ and introduces further proposals. Heartbeat in February will give you a summary of what is expected to happen.

From February we will be moving away from paper payslips. Only about 300 of us now do not have a used ESR log-in and all of us can access those services on our mobiles, tablets or on PCs. A lot of work has gone into these changes, and I would urge you take any final steps that you need to in order to be ready. Heartbeat will continue to be printed, although a e-copy is also available. It will work really well on myConnect which you can sign up to on Google Play or the Apple App Store– just search for SWBH myConnect. That way you also get nudges for key stories and things you might be interested in going on around our Trust.

Finally, a plug for this month’s TeamTalk. Among other issues we are trying to finalise that list of changes made in our care over the last few months because of patient feedback. The change where you work is probably a big deal for your patients, so let’s make sure it joins our roll of honour as we look to celebrate at least 50 adaptations made based on complaints, compliments, friends and family advice and so on.

#hellomynameisToby

Contact details change for ESR

 

The email address for contacting the ESR department has changed. You can now contact the team at swbh.esrhelpdesk@nhs.net. Please use the new email address with immediate effect.

Note: The old address will remain open for a while as ESR migrate the emails across. 

ESR FAQs:

Where else can I get help?

You can find a number of useful guidance documents

Why do I see different emails from ESR?

We know it can be confusing. In simple terms, emails you receive from ESR are either *system* generated emails or they are from us, the in-house *ESR team*.

How can I tell the difference?

If you see emails from ‘Production Workflow, ESR esr.wfmprod@nhs.net’, these are *system* generated emails and are straight from the ESR system itself. We cannot control or switch these off. They are not bad emails, and they shouldn’t be ignored as they contain information relevant to you.

What if I have a query about a system generated email?

 That’s when you need to contact the ESR Team.

Win a signed WBA ball and help raise funds for charity

 

Win a limited edition signed football West Bromwich Albion football (with a certificate of authenticity). Simply donate £5.00 to SWB iCares Trust Charity by clicking the link below.

https://www.justgiving.com/Icares-Trust-Charity

Note: The draw closes on Sunday 1 March

For more information please contact amanda.winwood@nhs.net.

International year of the nurse and the midwife: Amanda Brown

 

This year marks International Year of the Nurse and Midwife, a campaign by the World Health Organisation in honour of the 200th birth anniversary of Florence Nightingale.

Nurses and midwives play a vital role in providing health services in our workplace. They devote their lives to caring for mothers and children; giving lifesaving immunisations and health advice; looking after older people and generally meeting everyday essential health needs. They are often the first and only point of care in their communities. Throughout the year we will be highlighting some of our nurses, HCAs and midwives who are making a difference to our patients.

Today we feature Amanda Brown, Midwife who qualified as a student nurse in 1995.

Amanda initially worked in Burton-on-Trent in orthopaedics and trauma. She moved to Birmingham the following year to continue in this field for six years.

She started as student midwife at Sandwell and West Birmingham NHS Trust in 2001 and spent a long and hard 18 months learning a completely different profession.

The 47-year-old from Rubery has been working in maternity at the Trust since then, barring a year off during which she had a daughter of her own. She spent six years working in the labour ward before moving to be a part of the team working on the midwifery led Serenity Unit in 2010.

Do you now a nurse, HCA or midwife who is gong above and beyond to deliver quality care? Contact the communications team swb-tr.SWBH-GM-Staff-Communications@nhs.net

Star of the week – Nikki Smith, Project Officer

 

Congratulations to Nikki Smith who is this week’s Star of the week!

Nikki joined the learning works team in 2019 and has in a very short period of time shown her passion and commitment in developing and supporting staff and members of the local community.

Nominating Nikki for the award, Learning Works Coordinator Lawrence Kelly wrote, “Nikki is supporting over 200 local students experience the work place through a dedicated programme of learning and has recently supported an internship programme for young students on the autistic spectrum .

Nikki has positive, kind and effective people skills and constantly seeks opportunities to go the extra mile. I am proud to have to have her within my team , making a difference to everyone she works with.”

Receiving her award, Nikki said, “Its nice to be recognised, I’m just like any other member of staff, I just put the work in and try my best but to be recognised and acknowledged is a lovely feeling.”

If you have a colleague who you feel has gone above and beyond the call of duty and deserves recognition and has demonstrated our nine care promises, nominate them for the Star of the Week.

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Heartbeat: Learning from deaths – making life and death decisions

 

Death, it’s often a taboo topic, rarely spoken about and often veiled in statistics and mortality figures. However, death is one of the unfortunate inevitabilities that colleagues across the NHS deal with regularly.

Making sure that life and death decisions that have to be made are done so respectfully, ethically and with the best interests of the patient puts a huge strain on clinical colleagues who carry the responsibility. With this in mind, Dr Alison Eastaugh in her role as Chief Registrar and Dr Sarb Clare, Deputy Medical Director and enthused colleagues from across the Trust gathered at City Hospital to learn more about what they can do when they need to make a life and death decision. The day covered acute care, challenges of the post take ward round, DNR decisions as well as great tales and anecdotes from Dr Angus Mackenzie.

Dr Sarb Clare shared her thoughts, “Whilst we hope for the best outcomes for each patient often tough decisions have to be made and difficult conversations had, whether it is talking to a family about DNACPR or advanced care planning and palliative care. The burden of these tasks falls on the shoulders of clinicians and our decisions reverberate through whole families.”

The 50 colleagues that attended the conference also had the opportunity to hear from Anna Whitehouse. Her father (Alfred) was admitted to hospital with a suspected urinary infection which later transpired to be a perianal abscess. Through a series of unfortunate events, Alfred later contracted C difficile and developed chest infections during his stay. Through her words, Anna described her father as a man who led an independent life and who through his failing health and illnesses went from someone who was very much able to do things for himself to someone who lost the ability to communicate.

Shockingly, during Alfred’s failing health, the family were unable to speak to a consultant for almost two months. When the time came to discuss DNACPR, a doctor seemingly dropped the life-changing decision in the family’s hands without any thought or feeling. Whilst most of the care Alfred received was in a neighbouring hospital, Alfred was transferred to our care when on the supportive care pathway.

“Alfred’s story was eye-opening. It highlights how a range of decisions, miscommunications and failings had a dire effect on the failing health of a man who until his hospitalisation was fit and healthy. Whilst clinicians didn’t conspire to provide poor care, a series of failings ultimately led to a significant decline in his health and ultimately to his passing.”

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