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Monthly archives: July 2020

BME Staff Network meeting today

 

The next BME Staff Network Meeting will take place today from 12pm – 1.45pm. Due to social distancing guidelines, we will only be able to accommodate 18 colleagues in the postgraduate dining room at City Hospital. The 18 spaces will be on a first come, first served basis on the day.

With this in mind, we are urging colleagues to join the meeting via WebEx. If you wish to join the meeting via WebEx please click the link below. If you are having difficulties with the link please contact d.mighty@nhs.net who will send a link so you can join. Other details such as joining the meeting via WebEx and the agenda can be found below:

If you are not able to join the meeting but have a question for one of the guests please send your question to d.mighty@nhs.net.

Guests include:

  • Frieza Mahmood, Deputy Director of Workforce
  • Raffaela Goodby, Director of People and Organisation Development
  • Dr Masood Aga, Occupational Health Consultant
  • Nick Bellis, HR Business Partner/EDI Lead

Estates electrical work at City this weekend

 

Saturday 18 July:

Our estates team alongside Western Power Distribution are carrying out maintenance of the main high voltage electrical supply to City Hospital On Saturday 18 July.

Maintaining the switchgear is a statutory requirement but also proves the resilience of the dual supplies coming into the site and the automatic controls.

The whole City site except BTC and Sheldon will experience an interruption at 7.30am on Saturday 18 July while we switch over to generator. This interruption is identical to the monthly generator test which is well practiced.

The site will be switched back to mains at 4pm with a momentary interruption to power. The return to mains will be co-ordinated with staff on site to ensure the least impact to site operations and will be carried out in phases.

We are running the site on generator to reduce the number of switching operations and consequent inconvenience. The mains supply will be available in the event of an issue with one of the site generators. With the exception of the switching times, electrical supplies to all areas will be available as normal.

Sunday 19 July:

Our estates team will be maintaining the high voltage substation supplying BMEC, PAS data centre and telephone exchange.

There will be a short interruption to electrical supply at 7.30am while we switch over to generator and a momentary interruption at 1pm when supplies are restored to normal.  We have temporary supplies installed to provide a backup contingency.

To support, we have an engineer from power electrics (generators) on site both days and additional estates staff working.

For further information regarding the works or if there are any issues during the works please contact Malcolm Partridge on 07773 630866 or Ian Hawthorn on 07951 069299.

Are you labelling vacuette tubes correctly?

 

We must remind all Unity users to please ensure all specimens are labelled correctly as per the labelling of vacuette tubes guide below.

Labelling of vacuette tubes

Wellbeing success stories: We want to hear from you!

 

COVID-19 and lockdown has been a challenging time for both clinical and non-clinical colleagues across our Trust.

Even with this in mind, many colleagues have embraced the difficulties and used this time to make sustainable positive lifestyle changes all to boost their health and wellbeing. Or, perhaps you’d already chosen to make a change to your lifestyle before lockdown began.

Are you one of these people?  Whether it’s weight loss, giving up alcohol, quitting smoking or something else – whatever your story is we’d love to hear from you!

We’ll soon be launching our wellbeing campaign offering support to help you reach your goals. If you would like to share your story, please reach out to us via swbh.comms@nhs.net by Friday 7 August.

The mental health impact of COVID-19 survey

 

Stat-Stress have put together a survey aimed at NHS colleagues based in the West Midlands area  which evaluates the symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), anxiety and depression, and post-traumatic growth during the COVID-19 pandemic.

You can complete the survey by clicking the link below:

https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/SSC-19​

Childcare during the school holidays

 

Fun Fest:

The Fun Fest holiday club have confirmed they are operating clubs at number of  its locations. They have activities suitable for all ages. Please click here for further details.

They will be operating in the following areas:

Note: Fun Fest is Ofsted registered and run by fully qualified and experienced nursery staff, along with teaching assistants and enthusiastic students, creating an energetic and fun atmosphere, balanced with a safe and controlled environment.

All Active Camps:

All Active Camps (formerly known as All Active Sports) have been running holiday camps at Eversfield School since 2005.  They have confirmed that they have limited places available through out the school summer holiday period.

Venue: Everfield School, Solihull (near Solihull Town Centre, Manor Road Entrance Solihull B91 1AT.

Please see click here for details.

All Active Camps booking form

For more information please call either 07912 936 361 or 07960 450 874 or email info@allactivecamps.com.

Heartbeat: Proning – protecting poorly patients with positioning

 

One of the most surprising developments to come from learning how to support COVID-19 patients has been the fact that simply positioning a patient in a prone position can significantly improve their clinical outcomes when used in an early stage.

Awake proning, the art of positioning a patient on their stomach, face down with pillows in strategic places has been shown to considerably improve the clinical outcomes for patients with acute respiratory infections such as COVID-19. The technique, which looks incredibly simple and only requires the use of six pillows and a bed, is designed to reduce pressure on the lungs by the heart and diaphragm and improve ventilation.

To find out more about the technique, Heartbeat caught up with Dr Eoin Dore CT2 to find out more. He said. “Awake prone position, when used at an early enough stage, can be extremely beneficial to patients and even in some cases be the

difference between them needing invasive mechanical ventilation. The method which involves moving the patient into a prone position with supportive pillows in strategic positions is something we can do easily in almost any environment, it doesn’t involve any complex or hard to come by equipment. By turning patients at regular intervals we take the pressure off the lungs, the fluid that has accumulated in the lungs moves to another region and the lungs are able to work more efficiently.”

“Ultimately awake proning as an early intervention may well reduce the number of ICU admissions. We know that intubation in COVID-19 patients has a high mortality rate so this is key to procedure to keep in your mind.

“We aim to move patients into a prone position usually for four hour periods, with an hour set aside each time where the patient can take a comfort break for eating, drinking and using the toilet. When patients are proned, pillows are placed under the head, chest, pelvis and shins; however, the abdomen should remain free and unsupported or compressed. Finally, the bed should be angled at least a 30 degree incline with the head at the highest point. Oxygen masks should remain in place and there shouldn’t be any need to wean patients down immediately. Improvements can take many hours to manifest.”

Be sure to check out this step by step instructional video below.

Ice cream and ice lollies now available at the pop up shop

 

Our Sandwell pop up shop are now stocking ice cream and ice lollies for all to enjoy during the hot weather.

The opening times for the pop up shop are listed below:

  • Monday, Wednesday and Friday – 7.30am – 10am and 1pm – 4pm

Note: Please remember to bring your own reusable shopping bags when you come to the shop.

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

Chief Executive’s Message – Friday 10 July

 

David Carruthers, Medical Director

Toby is away

Sunday was a special day, when we saw the NHS celebrated nationally for providing free healthcare at point of use to our communities for 72 years. As we joined in the celebrations, this year was all about thanking our communities for their support to the NHS during the pandemic. You will have seen on social media photos of our sites (City, Leasowes, Rowley and Sandwell) lit up in blue. I am grateful to those of you who put a light in your windows to say thank you to all those who have stood with us.

With the further easing of lockdown this past weekend and social distancing measures, it is now more important than ever to ensure we do not relax our approach to COVID-19. We have all worked so hard to offer patients the best we can under challenging circumstances. We must continue to maintain our handwashing, mask wearing, good use of PPE and social distancing (in our workplace we will continue to observe the 2m social distancing rule).

As we continue to play our part in finding out more about COVID-19, I’m pleased that our research and development team have announced the launch of the SIREN study. It aims to determine if previous COVID-19 infection in healthcare workers confers future immunity from having the infection again. It will also look at any new infection and therefore will involve both repeat swab and the antibody blood test every two weeks on average (variable from 1 to 4 weekly sampling), for one year. Dr Masood Aga, Consultant and Specialty Lead in Occupational Medicine is leading the study, please consider whether you can help and contact the team for more information.

Tackling COVID-19 means ensuring that we are doing all we can to keep you safe at work. Over the past week you will have received an email from occupational health asking you to complete your risk assessment. Over 2,000 have now done this – thank you. If you haven’t already done so, I would urge you to do so as soon as possible. Your response will help us to assess your level of risk and enable managers to be provided with the actions they are required to take to keep you safe at work. Follow this link to complete the form COVID Risk Assessment Form

Your health and wellbeing remains a significant part of our offer as we fight COVID-19. I do encourage you to take advantage of the services we have on offer. See Connect for further details and take that first step to look after your wellbeing.

At Public Health & Equality Committee this week we discussed the ‘countdown plan’ to launch the healthy weight element of our staff wellbeing programme. This is due to go live on 14 August, and over the coming weeks you will begin to see a preview of some of the exciting offers we will launch next month. Our wellbeing programme is part of our wider wellbeing strategy which aims to tackle the rising incidence of obesity in our locality. More information will continue to be shared in the communications bulletin, please get involved and share your views.

It was good see the Junior Doctors and Medical Students Common Room, finally open on Tuesday. The new area boasts comfy sofas, a kitchenette, and two rest rooms, which each house a reclining chair and black out blinds. There are lockers and two computers where colleagues are able to continue with any work they need to. This is a fantastic resource for our medical colleagues. Thank you to doctors Alison Eastaugh and Eoin Dore for coming up with the idea and seeing it to fruition.

Congratulations to Dr May Yan who has taken over as Clinical Specialty Lead for Acute Medicine. May’s immediate priority is to help the team ‘restore and recover’ to some normality, to identify useful changes and new ways of working from our COVID-19 experience and how to sustain them, and to also to focus on the team’s training, education and wellbeing. May will play a vital role in integrating our City and Sandwell acute medicine teams in preparation for our move into MMUH. She will also be responsible for building a medical and nursing workforce which is vital in delivering high quality acute care. I was delighted to see that the move to Midland Met was the main point of discussion at the acute medicine QIHD (this week) chaired by Dr Sarb Clare, Deputy Medical Director, Acute Physician. It’s great to see colleagues enthused and energetic about our move to the new hospital.

The July issue of Heartbeat is out this week electronically and in print form. You will have seen in this issue our response to Black Lives Matter by our Chairman, Richard Samuda. The movement has highlighted how far injustices can remain ingrained within societies and institutions across the UK. At SWB Black lives do matter, and we must make this true for our colleagues and our patients, who come to us for help with a healthcare need. We must engage, listen and respond. The BME Staff Network will be working with Raffaela Goodby, Director of People and Organisation Development and other colleagues to do just that starting next week at the staff network meeting on Wednesday 15 July. The meeting will run from 12pm – 1.45pm in postgraduate dining room at City Hospital or you can join via WebEx Meeting number (access code): 137 753 6100 Meeting password: xJbFXRER524. Please do attend or join in virtually to have your say on how we can continue to ensure that Black voices and BME voices are heard and influence positive change. If you are unable to make the meeting you can email questions or suggestions to Donna Mighty, Assistant Primary Care Liaison Manager and Chair of the BME Staff Network d.mighty@nhs.net

At this Trust we take pride in recognising our colleagues and teams who go the extra mile to provide quality care to our patients. That is true for our upcoming Star Awards. We received well over 700 nominations this year – nearly 200 more than last year. Thank you for taking the time to acknowledge your colleagues. Long listing will begin next week and the shortlist should be announced on Monday 3 August. Good luck!

Our Star of the Week is Practice Development Nurse and Clinical Nurse Practitioner, Catherine Morris. Cath was nominated by colleagues from across the Trust for her work in supporting staff, patients and families with end of life care. Described as ‘an incredible CNS’ by colleagues, Cath has demonstrated her unrivalled compassion, care and patience through the very challenging COVID-19 pandemic.

I was delighted to hear we won an Employers Network for Equality & Inclusion award for Community Impact and highly commended for Inclusive Recruitment. The great work has been achieved through our widening participation project team. This is excellent recognition for the Trust and further demonstrates our efforts in being a diverse and inclusive organisation.

Congratulations are also in order to the City ED team, who have been shortlisted for the HSJ Patient Safety Awards for Changing Culture. The team were part of Wave 1 of the weConnect Pioneer Teams Programme and implemented a number of initiatives that had a huge impact on culture and engagement. Due to COVID-19 we had to temporarily stop Wave 2 but are looking to restart the programme in the coming weeks.

Heartbeat: Clinical Research Facility – are you ready to open a study?

 

Just over a year ago, the brand new clinical research facility (CRF) celebrated its launch. The CRF which boasts nine clinic rooms and associated facilities is available for research clinics and research related procedures. During May this year, new monitors with webcams were installed to ready the facility for Visionable web-clinics.

Prior to suspension of face to face clinics, the CRF was regularly used to approach and consent discussions and follow up visits for a variety of research projects for patients with a number of health conditions including cardiac problems and metabolic disorders, gastroenterology and haematology. Preparations to transfer in Dr Diana Kavanagh’s Friday respiratory clinic had been underway immediately prior to the shutdown of non-essential face to face clinics at the start of the pandemic. There are also plans to move in some of the haematology outpatients.

“You don’t have to only see patients who are going to be taking part in research to use the clinical research facility,” said Gina Dutton, Head of Research and Development. “Clinics that are suitable to take place in the CRF are those where a high proportion of patients are suitable to take part in research. So we would expect you to have a study open or ready to open and a plan for pipeline of studies to use the facility for a full clinic. “The CRF has been an excellent investment and has meant that we have the facilities available to enable Sandwell and West Birmingham NHS Trust to be chosen to deliver staff research.

“We are keen for new investigators to come forward and make grant applications to expand both within Trust research and to have a wider influence.”

The CRF is an ideal location to undertake research where a new treatment modality or intervention which can be delivered in an outpatient setting can be tested. There is a research laboratory with facilities to process blood and other samples for refrigeration and freezing for storage and dispatch to analysis labs. The CRF is also used for research project site initiation visits and monitoring visits, where sponsors visit the Trust to check source data for licencing studies. Face to face external visitor meetings are temporarily suspended and so our new web equipment has proved invaluable in making sure that these important activities can continue.

Colleagues are encouraged to contact R&D early in your discussions about new SWB originated research. The team can show you the facilities available as well as provide advice on grant applications and ethics and approvals processes. Contact Zaida Khalil on zaida.khalil@nhs.net.

Be sure to check out this short video featuring Gina Dutton, Head of Research and Development talking about our clinical research facility at the Trust.

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