Monthly archives: July 2020

Pulse Secure infrastructure upgrade: Thursday 30 July – 6am-6.20am

Our remote access system will be being upgraded tomorrow (Thursday 30 July) to increase capacity.

The system will be offline for 20 minutes from 6am as work is carried out to allow more concurrent users to be able to use the system.

If you are working remotely, please ensure you have saved any work and logged off Pulse Secure before it is taken offline at 6am.

If you have any issues logging back in once the system is brought back online, please ensure you report them to the 24 hour IT helpdesk on ext. 4050 or 0121 507 4050 for home workers.

Heartbeat: Tackling COVID-19 – reflections from the medicine cross-site team

By Dr Edward Fogden, Consultant Gastroenterologist, Clinical Lead for Gastroenterology

A lot has happened since Nick Sherwood, Joint Clinical Lead, Critical Care Services came to our joint gastroenterology and acute medicine QIHD in February to talk to us about how to deal with a viral pandemic. Since then COVID-19 has changed so much of how we live and work that it is difficult to predict what life will be like even a few months ahead.

Looking back, I feel we need to give credit to the positive approach shown by our teams despite the underlying anxiety about coming to work in the midst of a pandemic, getting used to the PPE that has become familiar to us all, and the impact of lockdown removing the usual pressure valve of social interaction with family and friends. Everyone’s working lives changed rapidly with different rotas, changing job roles and often different departments.

It has been a huge team effort – in medicine where I work, our EDs, AMUs and all the inpatient wards had to rapidly and fundamentally change how they worked. We have matrons and ward managers leading new teams with redeployed nursing staff, often on different wards to usual; medical specialty colleagues joined the wider medicine and emergency care team to cover wards and expand the on-call team to provide expanded hot and cold seven day cover across both sites; within days all grades of medical staff were on new rotas, and operational colleagues worked long hours alongside clinical and nursing leadership teams to make all of these major changes happen, whilst keeping everything running in the face of a what felt like an ever-changing situation.

As medicine reconfigured itself ahead of the surge, the whole patient-facing workforce needed to have been FIT tested, trained in PPE use and educated in how to treat a new disease. This posed its own challenges, particularly how to distil down the volume of clinical research that was being published on a daily basis, but also to ensure that everyone was able to access this.

Government guidelines also changed as often, and the Trust comms team had the unenviable task of trying to get this everchanging information to everyone in the organisation. We also saw the birth of our very own Youtube star, the trust’s face of PPE “Dr Mark says…” rivalling Joe Wickes for public service broadcasting.

There has been, and remains, understandable anxiety about the risks to patients and individual staff from COVID-19, given the impact of COVID-19 on our population and how hard Birmingham and the Black Country have been hit by COVID-19 relative to other parts of the country outside London. Better data to help us understand the risks to staff, including regarding ethnicity and underlying health conditions, has guided the development of risk assessments which are now available for all staff via occupational health. I’m very grateful that we didn’t experience the significant gaps in PPE reported in other trusts across the country, credit to the hard work of Dinah McLannahan and her team.

Every available person in my specialty (gastroenterology) worked in the Trust in the response to COVID-19 including many staff redeployed into the wards or ITU, or working from home due to shielding, leaving our mainly outpatient-based services running at a tiny fraction of its usual service. We had started a team WhatsApp chat a few years ago during heavy snow to help coordinate work, and found it really useful during Unity go-live – it proved helpful again to keep in touch with everyone as did the weekly Zoom call. I think it has allowed us to keep everyone informed as best we can about all the changes, support staff who have been redeployed across medicine including ITU and the wards, as well as colleagues working from home.

Patients definitely do worry about coming into contact with COVID-19, both in the community and in hospital, and are concerned about the risk of getting ill and dying from it. The press have reported NHS figures of 10-20 per cent of inpatients with COVID-19 have caught it whilst in hospital – this is a necessary reminder of the need for PPE to protect our patients, colleagues as well as ourselves. Nationwide the NHS has seen a steep drop in attendances to ED, referrals from GPs, and also GP attendances. This worries us, as large numbers of patients are not seeking medical attention for symptoms that need investigating urgently. We are going to see a rise in referrals as the lockdown eases and are working hard to deal with the challenges posed by the backlog of elective work across the NHS (outpatient clinics and endoscopy procedures in gastroenterology) and the impact this will have on our patients. The press are reporting on NHS-wide delays to elective care including outpatients, procedures and operations, and the impact on cancer care during the pandemic and afterwards.

One of the greatest changes due to COVID-19 has been around visiting, with only a very small number of patients able to have any visitors at all. Telephone calls and video calls have provided a link to family at home, and allow updates and discussions. Unfortunately the visiting restrictions have meant that patients have died in our care without their loved ones being with them, for example when relatives were themselves at risk, shielding, or living with elderly relatives and therefore unable to safely visit the hospital. This is such a difficult thing for staff as it is so alien to us as a society, yet was the reality for patients whose relatives were unable to visit or had to stay away after balancing the risks to them and their loved ones if they contracted COVID-19 whilst visiting.

As we re-form our teams, as life returns to the new normal, we need to recognise that everyone will have their own experiences from the past three months, from work and home. Now that the clapping has stopped, and the dust begins to settle from the past months, it is important that we support each other as we work to get back to a more normal existence and run our services post COVID-19. We need a continued focus on, and investment in health and wellbeing services to support staff. Some of us will experience mental health issues as a consequence to our experiences over the past months; we have seen great support for trainee doctors through Mike Blaber and the Three Squares Club and I encourage colleagues to seek the support that’s available for all staff via the health and wellbeing pages on Connect.

Unity tip of the week: Click on eCoach to easily access helpful guides

This week’s tip of the week comes from Dominic Legros, Business Relationship Manager and is:

“Click on eCoach to easily access helpful guides (videos, QRGs, SOPs) when unsure about how to do something on UNITY.”

We are encouraging colleagues at all levels across the Trust to suggest any quick wins or top tips they have for using Unity in their ward, area or department.

All suggestions are welcome so please get in touch! The best suggestions will be featured in our Unity Tip of the Week every Wednesday on Connect.

If you have a tip of the week please send it to swbh.unitytips@nhs.net.

Heartbeat: Caring for our elderly patients during COVID-19

Care, compassion and kindness have been three buzzwords that have been ringing through our hospitals ever since COVID-19 came to our doors. And whilst an unprecedented healthcare crisis unfolded across the world, colleagues continued to come to work, ready to don their PPE and care for their patients.

To find out more about how colleagues at Sandwell dealt with COVID-19, Heartbeat caught up with Consultant Geriatrician Grace Shorthouse. Sharing her experience, she said: “Elderly care was one of the first wards to become ‘hot’, so the team had to adapt very quickly to working in a COVID positive environment. We needed to get very familiar with our PPE and establish correct areas for donning/doffing. It was a real challenge to be able to communicate with our patients – many of whom have cognitive problems and trouble hearing and seeing. We had to be able to think on our feet and use different resources to help get our messages across to patients.

“Although many of our clinics were quickly converted to telephone clinics, this posed its challenges as it can be quite tricky when you are trying to assess things like the neurological symptoms of Parkinson’s disease. However, patients were often grateful that we were going the extra mile to ensure they remained well looked after and safe during the pandemic, even if it did mean some of our assessments were slightly limited.”

She added: “My colleagues have been wonderful! A lot of people were quite fearful, especially at the beginning of the pandemic, and we had contact with a lot of very frail patients that did not survive. This was a very stressful time so we all made an extra special effort to be kind to each other and talk through how we were feeling. There was a lot of camaraderie and team spirit. We made an extra effort to celebrate the small victories, including a PPE themed birthday cake for one of the consultants on the ward. We had

Haiku poetry competitions, sunflower growing competitions and a few (socially distanced) meals on the ward – it was a positive environment as we all went the extra mile to make things as pleasant as possible.

“Using WhatsApp to video conference with families has been a bit of a revelation. Most people would prefer to see their loved one in person, but some of the older patient relatives were often too frail to visit, even before COVID-19. I had one poorly patient who was dying and his wife requested we video conference with him so she could wish him a happy birthday and say goodbye one last time. He’d been unresponsive for almost a day, but once he heard her voice, he roused enough to open his eyes and tell her he loved her. It was a precious and beautiful moment – one that she was so thankful to have had. As sad as it was, it made my day!”

When asked about her tips for working through a pandemic, Dr Shorthouse said: “Take your time with PPE and with your patients. A smile goes a long way in communicating through a mask and visor. Keep a sense of humour, talk your concerns out with colleagues and drink plenty of fluids! (but go to the loo before you get dressed up in PPE!). Oh, and if you struggle with wearing masks, try sucking on a sweet underneath – that helped me relax and breathe a bit better!”

Trust retains TIDE silver award

The Trust has successfully qualified for the Talent Inclusion and Diversity Evaluation (TIDE) silver award courtesy of the Employers Network for Equality and Iclusion(ENEI). This means we have once again maintained our silver status.

TIDE is a self-assessment evaluation and benchmarking tool that  measures an organisation’s approach and progress on diversity and inclusion in the following areas:

• Workforce
• Strategy and plan
• Leadership and accountability
• Recruitment and attraction
• Training and development
• Other employment practices
• Communication and engagement
• Procurement.

We would like to congratulate everyone involved who has helped us retain this great accolade.

Chaplaincy candle lighting every Sunday

Every Sunday our chaplaincy team will hold a commemorative candle lighting (battery operated) session at both Sandwell and City.

• City Chapel, 11am – 12pm
• Sandwell Chapel, 2pm – 3pm

Before and since the start of this pandemic many of us have held a dear one, who is either sick or died, close in our hearts. Candle lighting goes back centuries for people of all faiths and none. It has been something which brings a little peace to us as we think of them or can even be looked at as an act of worship for you. The chaplaincy would like to offer this to you every Sunday as a space for you to pop in and take a minute.

Note: Social distancing rules will be in place for all candle lighting sessions. 

For more information the team can be reached at City on ext. 4055/bleep 5015 and at Sandwell on ext. 3552/bleep 5182.

Heartbeat: Community outbreak team – rapid response to support our population

Thinking back to only a few short months ago, Tammy Davies, Group Director of Primary Care, Community & Therapies, recalls her thoughts on seeing news reports about the then called ‘Wuhan flu’.

She remembers: “I must admit I didn’t anticipate just how much of an impact it would have both on our patients, local community and service delivery.

“Towards the end of March when we saw our first cases in the Trust, I realised that this would probably be the biggest national crisis the NHS would face in my lifetime. We quickly formed a seven-day group tactical response team to rapidly re-evaluate how we deliver services and deal with the changing picture.

“I felt apprehensive, and at times overwhelmed but mostly really lucky to have such an experienced and dedicated team. We knew we had to act quickly to meet the challenge, so turned one of our large offices into a tactical response team where the senior team all based themselves.

This helped with team bonding and moral support. I ensured the entire group and all staff were supported and prepared by redirecting resources into essential and urgent work and, ensuring colleagues had rest and access to wellbeing services.

“The outbreak response team was set up to undertake a same day response to areas of the community who have suspected outbreaks of COVID-19. Operating with a minimum of two nurses – one senior – two support workers, a driver and our contact centre team, we are also supported by women and child health colleagues for outbreaks in children. The team also can call on therapists and therapist assistants as needed.

“The team aims to successfully swab everyone who is suspected of having COVID-19 and provide support and reassurance when people are understandably anxious. Our target is to respond on the same day or within 24 hours.”

Covering the Sandwell area and operating seven days a week, the team’s core hours are 8am to 4pm, but they are flexible and will work later if required. They are ready should a community surge happen and consider a surge to be any increase in COVID-19 cases which may happen as lockdown restrictions are relaxed. However, they are also anticipating a surge in demand for community services from people with chronic illness who may deteriorate through a lack of medical/nursing and therapy support due to the crisis creating fear in patients about attending hospital appointments and seeking help. The team are also concerned that people may have missed immunisations and cancer screenings and this too may result in a later surge.

Tammy continued: “I am proud of how the group has quickly altered usual services to respond to the changing picture. In addition, the team have worked with the local community, public health, CCG and local authority to protect our patients and the local population.”

Marian Long, Group Head of Nursing in Community and Therapies clinical group, added: “With a remit to deliver a seven-day response service to support the control of local outbreaks as part of the next phase of test and trace, we’ve been working in partnership with our public health partners. By identifying and containing potential outbreaks, in workplaces, housing complexes, care homes and schools as well as supporting our Trust in ward-based outbreaks we can mobilise our team and respond promptly.

“This service is vital to help reduce the risk of a second surge and we are proud of our role in supporting this. Our task would not have been achievable without our fabulous contact centre, the energy of key individuals, namely Andy Churm and Jo Tonks, our very patient drivers Cash, Andy, Malcolm and Peter and expert support form Julie Booth and Dr Saluja.”

Kulwinder Johal, Clinical Directorate Lead in Ambulatory Therapies and End of Life, concluded: “As a group, the ethos has been that we are all in it together, so all staff in the group have supported the ask by working flexibly around the demands of the day to demonstrate our ‘can do’ attitude.”

Reminder to colleagues: Stay alert of scams during COVID-19

We are continuing to see an increase in scams exploiting remote working arrangements and urgent need for goods and services as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Fake emails often (but not always) display some of the following characteristics:

• The email contains spelling and grammatical errors.
• The sender’s email address doesn’t tally with the trusted organisation’s website address.
• The email does not use your proper name, but uses a non-specific greeting like “Dear customer”, “Hi friend”
• A sense of urgency; for example the threat that unless you act immediately your account may be closed or patient safety may be compromised.
• A prominent website link. These can be forged or seem very similar to the proper address of the known company, but even a single character difference means a different website.
• A request for personal information such as username, password or bank details.
• You weren’t expecting to get an email from the company that appears to have sent it.
• The entire text of the email is contained within an image rather than the usual text format.
• The image contains an embedded hyperlink which if clicked would divert to a bogus site.

What should you do if you have received a scam email?

• Exercise caution when dealing with any unsolicited emails.
• Check the sender’s email domain by hovering your mouse over the sender’s name.
• Do not click on any links in the scam email.
• Do not reply to the email or contact the senders in any way.
• Do not open any attachments or download content or images if you are prompted to do so.
• Permanently delete the email.
• Report any concerns to Informatics

For detailed information please click here.

Star of the week – Bradley Parsonage

Our Star of the Week this week goes to Bradley Parsonage, trainee nursing associate.

Bradley is well-loved and appreciated by his ward team and was nominated for the work he has done during the pandemic, particularly supporting two COVID+ dementia patients but also because his team recognise and value his helpfulness and the general support he provides to the ward. He has shown willingness to learn and is always ready to offer a helping hand to patients. Bradley was also recognised for all the small things he does to make life easier for his colleagues and more pleasant for the patients he looks after.

Do you know someone in your team that has gone above and beyond the call of duty? Why not put them forward for Star of the Week by clicking here.

Chief Executive’s Message – Friday 24 July

This week I have been reflecting on how small things matter and really make a difference to people. Often, things we do that seem inconsequential to us actually have a big impact on people’s day and overall experience. The sort of things I am talking about could be; checking in with a friend to see if they are ok, making someone a cup of tea, helping with directions, assisting a colleague with the care of a patient, or chatting to a family member who is worried about their relative. For our patients it often makes the difference between a good experience of care at our Trust or a poor one. And for our colleagues and ourselves, it can transform how we feel about our work as an employee at SWB. We all need to feel valued and recognised, and small acts of kindness – the theme of our response to COVID-19 – mean a lot in keeping us motivated and resilient in the face of hardship.

This way of behaving is exemplified in Star of the Week, training nurse associate Bradley Parsonage on N3. Bradley is well-loved and appreciated by his ward team and was nominated for the work he has done during the pandemic, particularly supporting two COVID+ dementia patients but also because his team recognise and value his helpfulness and the general support he provides to the ward. He has shown willingness to learn and is always ready to offer a helping hand to patients. Bradley was amazed to receive this award and for being recognised for all the small things he does to make life easier for his colleagues and more pleasant for the patients he looks after. Well done, Bradley!

Small things we do, added together, can have a huge impact on the people around you. Our infection control approach is similar – you may think that wearing a mask in a clinical building is a small thing that makes no difference, but, combine that with our responsible approach to social distancing, regular handwashing and the wearing of all the appropriate PPE in close contact with patients, then you can be assured, and our patients can be assured, that you are doing your best to keep people safe. So, here is a reminder that you must wear a mask in our clinical buildings, not just in our consulting rooms, patient homes, theatres and wards but in the corridors of our premises and as you enter through the communal areas. NHS workers have been held up as heroes throughout the pandemic and recognised for all the essential, caring work that you do, day in, day out. Let’s make sure we set the right example and maintain high standards both when at work and at home. People look to us for guidance and will follow what we do as trusted experts. It’s our duty not to let them down.

You will have seen news coverage this week about the increasing cases of COVID-19 across Sandwell. My thanks go to our fantastic community outbreak team who have been in to workplaces in Smethwick to do rapid testing. We are keeping a close eye on the numbers of cases so that we can best support patients in the community and those who may need hospital admission. These cases are a stark reminder that the virus has not gone away and we must remain vigilant, despite the easing of restrictions in our daily lives. Please share the messages about staying safe from Sandwell’s director of public health, Lisa McNally, which are available in other languages, with your family, friends and patients.

Pictured above is our latest cohort of WoW (World of Work) participants. This programme is led by our volunteer service with support from the learning and development team, widening participation and finance colleagues who are delivering a programme of support to people who want to develop their skills and experience, progressing into work or further education. The programme gives them volunteering opportunities at the Trust and with partners in the community as well as training to stand them in good stead when applying for posts. If you have volunteers from the WoW programme supporting your team with a placement please help them and support them. The programme is needed perhaps now more than ever as people in our communities experience job losses, businesses failing and loss of confidence in finding work. Contact the volunteer team to find out more about the programme and if you know of anyone who could benefit in future cohorts.

Next month we welcome new medical students from Aston and Birmingham Universities and I am really delighted with the partnerships we have built with these two institutions. The programme at Aston is focused on widening participation, taking on students who have been previously underrepresented in the medical workforce as well as international students. This, combined with the good work already done at the University of Birmingham on widening participation, means we will see more trainees from a varied background progressing through their medical careers at our Trust. We consistently receive positive feedback from students who take part in placements here, thanks to our brilliant education teams, tutors and supportive colleagues and I am confident that this summer’s cohort will have a really positive experience. As you see the new starters out and about do take the time to welcome them and offer them your help. As I said at the start of the message, it will be the small things you can do that they will remember and it will help them to settle in well at the Trust.

Further new arrivals have been seen on our Trust estate this week with mobile scanners at Sandwell and City Hospitals. This additional capacity is helping support our restoration and recovery plans, completing tests that were rescheduled due to the pandemic. Thank you to everyone who is working hard across the Trust delivering sessions during the evenings and weekends to minimise delays for our patients. It is great to see activity increasing and confidence building that we can provide safe care for our patients.