Monthly archives: September 2020

Lending your support to Critical Care – Join the ICU Reservists Team

Thank you to everyone who stepped forward and supported colleagues in Critical Care during the first surge in COVID-19 cases earlier in the year. We are now looking to welcome nursing and health care support colleagues from across the organisation in to our newly formed ICU Reservist Team.

With cases of COVID-19 beginning to once again increase, we may need to increase the size of our ICU service significantly at short notice to cope with the additional clinical needs. To cope with this, we need people like you to make sure we do it quickly and safely.​

If you have previously worked in Intensive or High Dependency care, have other skills that you think you could offer or just a wish to be part of the Intensive Care response to COVID-19 then please register as an ICU Reservist.

Your contribution could vary from occasional Bank shifts to full redeployment for the duration of the pandemic and the team will work with you and your current managers to facilitate that. You will be offered training and support to help you become an essential part of our team.

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Be on the lookout for our Flu-Per Troopers – coming to you soon….

Mamma Mia…Here we go again! It’s that time of the year already and today our flu campaign launches with an all new ABBA inspired theme. This year we’re doing things differently to ensure we are all protected and ready to tackle winter safely together.

Flu-Per Troopers (our peer vaccinators) have been recruited across the entire Trust to ensure everyone has the opportunity to have their flu jab. We will be coming to you in your areas and for those of you working from home we will be setting up dedicated days for you to attend and have your flu jabs. We will be taking a phased approach and rolling vaccines out over the coming weeks to different areas of the organisation so please be sure to keep an eye on our daily communications bulletin and Connect.

COVID-19 caught the world off guard but we know the flu is coming, it’s preventable and we already have a well-tested quadrivalent vaccination on offer. With your support, we can protect you, our colleagues, patients and those you care for the most.

We are asking all colleagues to play their part and take advantage of the free flu vaccinations on offer. It’s important to be protected early, to give your body time to build up its defences and to generate some antibodies.

Everyone that has their jab will be entered into a prize draw to win tickets to see Mamma Mia – The Party Experience in London with money included towards hotel and travel costs.

What are you waiting for? Say I do, I do, I do, I do, I do want my flu jab!

Action required: Network upgrade on City Main Spine taking place on Thursday 1 October from 11pm 

As part of our ongoing work to improve the network links across all sites, there is a planned upgrade taking place on Thursday 1 October from 11pm affecting the main spine at City Hospital. The work is scheduled to begin at 11pm and should be completed by 11:55pm. This will result in all networked IT services including Unity being temporarily unavailable for up to 10 minutes at 11pm.

Colleagues will need to ensure they have saved their work prior to 11pm to avoid losing unsaved worked when the upgrade takes place. Desktop alerts will be issued from 10pm reminding colleagues about the planned downtime.  If colleagues connect via WiFi then all IT services will remain available as normal.

Please be assured the activity will be closely monitored at all times.

Please call the 24 hour IT service desk if you experience any prolonged issues after this time on ext. 4050 or 0121 507 4050 for home workers.

Is your parking is moving to New Square from 5 October?

As you may be aware parking has been reduced massively across both the Sandwell and City sites so we can build our new multi-storey car parks for 2021. This means 220 non-clinical colleagues will be moved offsite to parking at New Square from Monday 5 October. If you’re one of these 220 colleagues who are being moved you will have been notified about your move.

If you would like to appeal your move please email full details of your mitigating circumstances to swbh.carparkidadminoffice@nhs.net. Please state your name, vehicle registration and SWBH parking permit number. Give full details of the reason why you should continue to park at Sandwell site including supporting documentation from your GP if the appeal is on grounds of reduced mobility or debilitating illness. If you are a blue badge holder please enclose a copy of both sides of the badge with your appeal.

Note: Please ensure you have submitted your appeal by Wednesday 30 September, 5pm.

Please see car parking FAQ document for further details around parking off site.

Struggling for parking at City?

With building works also underway at City Hospital regarding parking there are also a few spots where additional a spaces have now been made available for colleagues to park.

These include:

• Brookfield House
• Sunken Gardens
• Rear of Summerfield House

For more information please contact diane.alford@nhs.net or james.pollitt@nhs.net.

Heartbeat: COVID-19 in the community

Whilst the response to COVID-19 in our acute hospitals has been amazing, it’s time we recognised the incredible work that has been happening out in the community, with testing teams responding to outbreaks and community nursing teams tending to at risk patients – all whilst a nation went into lockdown.

It’s often easy when you think about healthcare and the response to COVID-19 to focus on hospitals and patients arriving at emergency departments, yet at our Trust, almost 70 per cent of our care is delivered to patients out in the community, to patients who are frail, elderly, infirm or generally unwell; patients who regardless of lockdown and this pandemic still need to receive care.

Throughout the pandemic, clad head to toe in PPE, colleagues in the community have continued to deliver care to patients in the community and have also played a pivotal role in the management of outbreaks in the community.

To find out more about the work of the community teams, Heartbeat spoke to Tammy Davies, Group Director of Primary Care, Community and Therapies. She said, “Our community teams have done an outstanding job at a time when our community was in need. They have demonstrated all that defines our Trust in their determination, compassion and care.

“When COVID-19 began to have an impact locally, our teams were able to very quickly change the way they work whilst still providing the same level of care. Whereas in the past we would have district nursing colleagues working on their own and driving from visit to visit, we were able to partner up and offer vans so that colleagues had somewhere safe and secure they could don and doff their PPE before visiting patients, and most importantly, this meant that we continued to see COVID-19 positive patients.

“We knew early on that COVID-19 would inevitably mean that we would have many more patients moving into our palliative care and end of life services so we needed to act quickly to restructure our services to ensure we were able to provide the best level of care. One of the biggest changes was the conversion of Leasowes Intermediate Care Centre into an end of life care facility where our patients could be moved to receive high quality, patient-focused end of life care in their final days.

“Our teams also began working much more closely with local care homes, providing advice and training on how to use PPE safely as well as much needed fit testing. With all of the focus nationally on hospitals and the NHS, it would have been very easy to forget that we have huge numbers of vulnerable people living in care homes and that they fit the profile for COVID-19, where the virus has a particularly high mortality rate in older patients who have pre-existing comorbidities.

“By offering early intervention in the community, through awareness raising and proactive engagement we were able to begin to make progress in tackling the virus. Our teams have worked closely not only with our staff in providing swab testing and antibody testing but also the local authority too. We opened a range of testing sites at Sandwell and City and supported key workers to be tested. To date, these testing facilities have swabbed over 5879 people to test for current COVID infections as well as completing over 12,295 antibody tests.

“As the government mandated lockdowns have eased and the local economy has begun to return to normality, our outbreak teams have been once again out supporting the local authority and partners in public health to identify, test and manage local outbreak clusters. This has meant that our region has been able to react quickly, identify at risk patients and to proactively support them and prevent further transmission.

“Through close working with colleagues in primary care, we have been able to stay ahead of the virus in the community, our GP colleagues in Your Health Partnership (YHP) joined our Trust in April, in the height of the pandemic, however, they very quickly set up a COVID red site where a patient who had tested positive could go to for care, limiting the risk and impact at their other clinics.

“The reach of our work hasn’t just been in the community either, our colleagues were also involved in the large scale redeployment in our Trust to bolster our inpatient and acute services, and we had colleagues move to medicine and into ITU offering a seven-day rota for therapy services.”

Two Wheels Better scheme – bike buddying

Two Wheels Better is a scheme run by NHS colleagues to get more people commuting by bike. They do this by grouping people who are new to cycling or apprehensive of the road with more experienced cyclists on the same route. By cycling together we will make our commutes more fun and the roads safer and healthier for everyone!

If you are interested in starting to cycle, getting back on the road or helping someone else find their wheels on your normal commute, we want to hear from you.

The best starting point is via this two minute survey at https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/8F5SHKK​ and following the link to join the Whatsapp group at https://chat.whatsapp.com/DgU0TEt4y91Ls4JwMUEjtQ.

For more information please email twbcycling@gmail.com or call 07782546606.

Continence link nurse meetings for nurses and HCAs

Are you interested in promoting continence and managing incontinence? Do you have any complex cases you wish to share and discuss? Come and join us at our link nurse meetings, facilitated by the continence service. Registered nurses meet bi-monthly and HCAs quarterly.

Next meeting dates:

• 21 October, 11.30am – 12:30pm, Seminar Room, Oldbury Health Centre. This session is for registered nurses.
• 5 November, 1pm – 2pm, Room 2, 3^rd Floor, Lyng Health Centre. This session is for HCAs.

Note: Social distancing measures will be in place a these meetings and face coverings will be required. 

To register your interest or request a topic for discussion or for more information, please email continence.team@nhs.net.

Chief Executive’s Message – Friday 25 September

Our flu campaign kicks off in earnest on Monday now we have received of our first batch of vaccinations.  Over 1500 vaccinations are available for frontline clinicians with the remaining stock to cover all staff expected in coming days. Peer vaccinators in our wards and services are collecting the vaccines and will be making sure that their colleagues are getting the jab. Our next order of vaccines will be here soon. Make sure you know who your peer vaccinator is and make arrangements to see them to get your jab. The flu jab will come to your area but you need to make sure you are aware of when you will be able to get it.

I don’t need to tell you how important the flu vaccination is this year. It is a professional responsibility for clinical staff to protect your patients and not put them at risk. This includes not putting them at risk of catching flu whilst receiving care and treatment at our Trust. And of course, it is important for your own health and wellbeing and to protect your families. With covid not going away, reducing flu transmission in the community and within our own services is a vital part of our winter  and covid surge preparation. The flu vaccine does not give you flu and if you have concerns about the impact on your own health please talk to me or any of our clinicians about that so we can put your mind at rest.

Protecting ourselves and others from risk of infection is something we have been talking about relentlessly throughout the different stages of the coronavirus pandemic. I make no apologies for taking a very firm line on this matter. As an employee of the Trust it is essential that you follow our infection prevention and control (IPC) guidelines and also essential that you follow the national and local restrictions on social contact. I want to urge every one of you to check your own practise and make sure that you: wear a FRSM provided for you on entry to our clinical buildings, practise social distancing at work and out of work, wear the right PPE for the area you work in and your individual role / risk assessment, wash your hands regularly for at least 20s with soap and water, and use hand sanitiser. Over coming days we will become increasingly intolerant of colleagues who don’t follow this rules. Covid outbreaks at work are not inevitable, they can be prevented if we all comply with the guidance. As well as checking your own practise, please check what others are do and challenge them. Some years ago, our Trust ran an “ok to ask” campaign to encourage challenge on handwashing and being bare below the elbows in a clinical setting. It is the spirit of this campaign that I want you all to take on – it is ok to ask someone to wear a mask, it is ok to ask someone to keep their distance, it is ok to check that someone has washed their hands. And, if we ourselves are challenged, we should welcome it, because that is how we make our Trust a safe place to work.

I’m delighted that the building for the two new, much-needed, multi-storey car parks has begun and, yes, I have heard from many of you the parking difficulties that people are now experiencing due to the lack of spaces while the development continues. I am sorry for this added disruption and we are looking urgently at what additional capacity we can create for people to park elsewhere. You can already have a permit for the New Square car park that means free parking at New Square (a 10 minute walk) yet retains access to the other site car parks. Contact Diane Alford if you want to take this up. Next week a further 220 non-clinical staff will be notified of the intention to change their parking passes from the Sandwell site car park to New Square. Over 100 staff already use the New Square parking facility and it is now a necessity to increase this usage to ease congestion and allow patient care to continue without disruption. I know this is not a popular move, but it is one we need to take while the new car parks take shape.  Those of you who live within a mile of our sites are already travelling to work using alternative means so thank you for your cooperation with that. I know it can be an inconvenience. At City there will soon be more capacity as the transport vehicles move and there remain spaces on our sites which are perhaps not so well-known (on your right hand side as you enter from Western Road). We will publicise these areas more over the coming days. Both new multi-storey car parks will be open next summer (2021).

Other estates developments continue to progress well including the new GP practice building on the Sandwell site, and of course, the new Midland Metropolitan University Hospital. We have excellent partnerships in place to progress that build with Balfour Beatty and their suppliers, as well as Engie. It is fantastic that the construction programme is able to report only minimal delays as a result of covid and the work that the Trust team are doing, along with our construction colleagues, is enabling work to continue safely. Getting ready for the move to Midland Met is a “now” priority and engagement activities are taking place across the Trust with clinical teams to understand the pathways that need to be developed. Pictured above are members of our critical care team on a site visit and many other teams will have the opportunity to do this in coming weeks.

The new hospital is an essential part of how we deliver health and care across Sandwell and West Birmingham and the success of it relies on strong partnerships with social care, primary care and the voluntary sector. The two Integrated Care Partnerships in our area have agreed priorities to improve health outcomes and delivering on these outcomes, rather than every possible outcome, will make a long-term difference to our population’s health. But our partnerships of course do not end at the Sandwell and West Birmingham boundaries. We see integrated care as being the key to overcoming organisational and geographical boundaries and ensuring that care is centred around the patient. We have strong clinical collaborations in place with neighbouring acute Trusts both in Birmingham and the Black Country and we are committed to building on those where this is a clear case to improve clinical care and outcomes. We know that acute providers are being urged to work more closely together, in part to support covid recovery and we will continue to participate in joint working, rather than organisational change, particularly considering the transformational work needed to deliver Midland Met.

The national NHS staff survey is due out to every colleague next week. Some people will receive paper copies but the majority of us will receive an email asking us to complete online. We did really well last year with one of our highest ever response rates so we are determined to do even better in 2020. This survey provides us with really useful information about how you feel about your job and working for the Trust. Importantly it helps us to benchmark against other, similar organisations. It will be the first mass NHS survey since the start of the pandemic so this year’s results will be particularly interesting. Your responses are totally anonymous. The survey is administered by an independent company so no-one from the Trust will be able to identify your response.

The “star of the week” scheme came out of comments from staff about improving recognition for great work by employees – which is just one example of how we have acted on staff feedback. This week’s award goes to Karen Mowatt-Shirley, HCA on Lyndon 5 for her fast response in coming to the aid of a patient in crisis. Her ward team are proud of her actions and resilience – well done, Karen!

Star of the Week: Karen Mowatt-Shirley

Our Star of the Week this week is Karen Mowatt-Shirley, HCA on Lyndon 5.

Karen’s courage, bravery and focus on patient safety is a credit to her and this was never more evident than during a very serious incident recently on Lyndon 5.

During the incident on the ward when emergency access was required to a bathroom of which the lock would not open, Karen selflessly managed to gain access knowing that the safety of the patient in the bathroom absolutely depended on her actions. Karen acted in a manner that should be honoured and due to her quick thinking and selfless actions the patient’s life was most definitely saved.

The incident was extremely traumatic for the ward but Karen showed strength and resilience and certainly went above and beyond the remit of the her role.

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.

Unity is 1 this week

12 months ago this week (Monday 21 September) we went live with Unity, our electronic patient record and began a journey that changed the way we all work for the better.

A year on we are pleased that many of you have seen and continue to see the benefits of Unity.

Be sure to check out the video below to find out more about how colleagues have transitioned to the new system over the last year.