Monthly archives: September 2020

Star of the Week – Neale Martin

Our Star of the Week this week goes to Neale Martin in Informatics.

Neale was nominated for the support he provided to a colleague who was returning to work in a new role following 20 weeks shielding at home.

The colleague was having problems with the laptop and Neale took time out to meet the colleague, demonstrate how to use the different systems and checked that everything was working correctly. He was able to put her mind at ease, during an anxious time starting work in her adjusted 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.

Sexual Health Week 2020: 14-20 September

Week commencing 14 September is sexual health week which aims to raise awareness and understanding around all things sexual health.

This includes:

• Education around sexual health
• Sexual consent
• Sexually transmitted diseases
• Contraception

Do any of your patients need to be referred to the sexual health department?

The sexual health department is based on the 3rd floor of the Lyng Centre and can be contacted on 0121 612 2323 or you can make a referral by contact swbh.ishus@nhs.net.

For more information please contact talibah.sterling@nhs.net.

Chief Executive’s Message – Friday 11 September

Hi everyone – how has your week been? I know things have been really tough recently, and continue to be, but despite this I hope you’ve all had a generally positive, fulfilling week. If not, is there anything you personally could do differently to make next week better for our patients, yourself, or your colleagues? Or is there anything you need to speak up about if you feel it is outside of your control? If you are seeking permission, please take it!

Continuing on from last week’s theme, we continue to speak to Black Country partners about their plans to collaborate. Since last week we have written formally to STP leaders setting out our position, which reflects what I said last week in my message, and this position has been formally fed back to regional NHS leaders – that the Sandwell and West Birmingham system is already on a path to deliver some of the desired benefits of collaboration through the plan to rationalise much of our service delivery from two sites to one through the building of the Midland Metropolitan University Hospital. The Trust’s focus needs to remain on delivery of this and not any wider consideration of organisational change. The Trust is not seeking at all to discourage the configurations of our partner trusts that they are or may be deliberating on, assuming this will be a reasonable self-financing improvement case.

The key focus for us remains delivery of high quality care for our patients, delivery of our clinical and financial plans, strong operational performance in response to COVID Phase 3 recovery and restoration, and making progress with our CQC readiness such that a rating of “good” is achieved as soon as possible. As always, any day, any time, if you have concerns about our ability to deliver any of that, you must speak up. We held our twice-yearly speak up day this week – thank you to those who took the opportunity to raise concerns, I hope you found it constructive and helpful and are confident issues will be taken forward. It is important to note, though, that speak up day is also about raising awareness about ways in which you can speak up, which isn’t just on one day in September – it’s every day. We will be focusing more on this in the days and weeks ahead, in particularly during October which is the national awareness month for the Freedom to Speak Up Guardians. It isn’t one day a year; it is an everyday culture that we will embed.

COVID-19 has not gone away. It is clear that infection rates are increasing in our local area, particularly in Smethwick and Birmingham, with announcements today on the reintroduction of local restrictions of movement, limiting households meeting together. For those of you personally impacted by this, please do take advantage of our mental wellbeing support in the Trust through the Recharge Booth, or the Wellbeing Sanctuary. Details are in the COVID-19 comms bulletin and on Connect. There is support in place via your line manager also for those impacted by school closures.  It is therefore more important than ever that we all continue to adhere to these new restrictions, and for all of us – social distancing, personal hand hygiene and PPE guidelines, at work, and at home.

I remember this time last year having a fantastic presentation at our Trust Board meeting from our Organ Donation professionals on their priceless work. Organ Donation week runs up until 13 September with thanks to our teams for raising awareness of this important subject. It is vital that we all know that the law around organ donation has changed to an opt-out system to allow more people to save lives. There is still a choice if you want to be an organ donor or not and I would encourage you to talk to those closest to you about organ donation and your decisions.  You can find out more about the changes and what they mean for you here, where you can also read stories from people about the impact of organ donation for themselves and their loved ones. Thank you to the outstanding clinicians in our Trust who lead and are involved with organ donation work, which involves talking to families sensitively, often at their most difficult moments.

This week saw a new arrival in BMEC with the donation of a mini-Tesla for children to drive as they journey to surgery. The donation was provided by Tesla Owners UK to Your Trust Charity following the grateful thanks of a member whose child received excellent care. I am sure that this will help relieve anxieties at what can be a scary time. Road (corridor!) safety procedures will need to be followed, and of course, the BMEC team will make sure it is covid-safe by thorough cleaning between each small patient.

Congratulations to Neale Martin in Informatics who is this week’s Star of the Week. Neale was nominated for the support he provided to a colleague who was returning to work in a new role following 20 weeks shielding at home.  The colleague was having problems with the laptop and Neale took time out to meet the colleague, demonstrate how to use the different systems and checked that everything was working correctly. He was able to put her mind at ease, during an anxious time starting work in her adjusted role.

There is only one week to go to cast your vote in four of the categories for this year’s star awards. I have cast my votes and it takes only a few seconds to do! The closing date is next Friday so please take some time to read the summaries of your colleague’s excellent achievements and select your preferred winner.

I return back to my “day job” next week as David Carruthers returns from leave. It’s been an absolute honour to stand in, I am so proud to work with you all.

Dinah McLannahan
Chief Finance Officer

Thrombolysis in stroke study day: 29 September

We will be hosting a free full day course for colleagues involved in stroke thrombolysis from 8.30am – 4.30pm, Tuesday 29 September at the Education Centre, Sandwell, Rooms 9/10.

The topics covered will include an introduction to thrombolysis, NIHSS stroke scale, stroke mimics, pharmacy issues, nursing care, local protocol, thrombectomy and complications of thrombolysis.

The course follows the national curriculum for stroke thrombolysis and BASP (British Association of Stroke Physicians) training requirements and is fully accredited by the Royal College of Physicians.

Note: Spaces on this course are limited and will operate on a first come, first served basis.

For booking and more information, place please contact either lorena.chua@nhs.net or sambanwell@nhs.net.

Publishing without tears webinar: 29 September

Do you want to know how to get published in whatever journal you want, whenever you want?

Nathalie Le Bot, Chief Editor Nature Life Sciences will offer invaluable advice on ways to make communicating the fruits of research as successful as possible from constructing a paper and choosing a journal, to writing a cover letter and responding to referees’ comments.

This will be complimented with an overview of the submission and peer review workflow, as well as the importance of research integrity and ethics. Finally, we will talk about the most important post-publication aspects that need to be considered in order for a paper to have maximum impact.

Throughout the talk we will reference current technology and innovation, including unique identifiers, open data, reproducibility, and how to use metrics responsibly. At the end of the session, you will get a chance to put any remaining questions directly to our Chief Editor Nature Life Sciences, Nathalie Le Bot.

If you wish to join this webinar on Tuesday 29 September please click here to register.

For further details please see Publishing without tears webinar information sheet.

For more information please email adeurope@springernature.com.

Heartbeat: Recruitment goes flexible as COVID-19 continues

Although it may be accurate to say the pandemic has thrown the need for more healthcare practitioners around the country into greater relief, the need remains a continuous one no matter where you go. In that regard, the COVID-19 pandemic has not changed matters.

Throughout the last 12 months there have been ten recruitment events ranging in size and scope at our Trust; some for specific departments and areas of care (stroke services, radiography and elderly care as examples), others on a more general scale while some have been focused on key roles. Back in January, you may recall we held a very large nursing recruitment event at the Birmingham Treatment Centre where we welcomed hundreds of people over the day which resulted in a significant number of hires and follow-ups. Our teams were also able to answer questions from several individuals looking to begin their journey into nursing and offer some guidance.

These are, of course, in addition to the general recruitment work we do as a Trust, the work we do in support of training the next generation of nurses and the extra projects we undertake. An example being our Learning and Development team, which is helping health professionals from overseas looking to get back in clinical practice.

COVID-19 has necessitated a change in the way we do recruitment. Over the last month, we have had two ‘virtual’ campaigns taking place – one for theatres and one for medicine and emergency care. These have eschewed the normal event and instead embraced a highly flexible approach, with all interviews done online. This flexibility has also benefitted the departments looking to hire with rotas and roles still affected by the pandemic.

Di Eltringham, Group Director of Nursing for Surgical Services at the organisation, said: “Historically the Trust has always held large in-house recruitment events which have been highly successful. But with the onset of the pandemic we realised that this would not be an option so have decided to take things online.

“We have vacancies to fill, but we want our candidates to get to know us, that’s why we’re offering them virtual coffee with clinical leads, practice development nurses and members of our human resources department before interviews.”

Candidates will be able to find out about the recent investments we have made within our organisation, including a new £1.2 million children’s emergency care unit, training and development opportunities, and the fantastic range of staff benefits on offer.

The Trust is also building the new super hospital, the Midland Metropolitan University Hospital, which will boast the biggest A&E department in Europe, with state-of-the-art equipment. It’s due to open in 2022 and will be a fantastic place to work.

The health and wellbeing of our staff is also very important to us. We have a wellbeing sanctuary for employees where they can access free massages and an energy pod which can be used on breaks, giving staff a chance to relax and rejuvenate whilst they are on shift.

And staff currently working at the Trust will receive a “refer a friend” bonus if their recommended person is hired. There are so many reasons why we want people to join our Trust and we invite prospective candidates to contact us to find out more about what we have to offer.

It is important even during the COVID-19 pandemic to not lose sight of our business as usual, we have a large community to serve and we are cognisant of our need to succession plan,” added Matron of Theatres, Amber Markham. “We are building our team to be the best workforce to move into MMUH and provide the highest quality care to our patients. Surgery will be split over three sites so we need to ensure we have a skilled and flexible workforce to meet the demands of the service. The next 18 months allows us to develop newly appointed candidates to be able to flex across specialties so we can deliver surgery across the organisation.”

The positive atmosphere at the Trust is also seen as an attractive option to those looking to join, often emphasised by teams when recruiting. For example: to quote a colleague who we have recently featured as part of the recruitment campaign it’s “like a big family, we strive to give the best care and it’s a fantastic environment to work in.” Another senior Theatres worker encouraged nurses to apply emphasising how the Trust in a 35+ year career had been “the one to truly invest” in him and his skills as a healthcare practitioner.

Star Awards 2020: Non-Clinical Team of the Year – vote now!

This years’ Star Awards will once again look to recognise those colleagues who go above and beyond the call of duty to help us provide great care and support to our patients.

Non-Clinical Team of the Year is a team that has provided consistently excellent performance whilst meeting financial and operational targets.

The nominees this year are:

• Informatics Team
• Portering Team
• Procurement PPE Team

Voting will stay open through to Friday 18 September. Please take the time to think about who has gone the extra mile and submit your votes.

Remember, you can only vote once for each category so make your vote count.

Click here to cast your vote now!

If you have any questions, please contact the communications team on 0121 507 5303 or email swbh.comms@nhs.net.

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Revised Attendance at Work (Sickness Absence) Policy

Message from Raffaela Goodby, Director of People and Organisation Development

Our new Attendance at Work (Sickness Absence) Policy is now launched. We have been working with our Trade Union partners to ensure that there is support for our colleagues during times of ill health and ensure that we have clear and robust processes to manage absence.

The policy has changed, with changes to the sickness episodes triggers and how we treat multiple absences in a short amount of time. It’s really important that you take some time to read and understand the briefing and toolkit, as all sickness absence from 1 August will be managed in accordance with this policy.

To help you understand the changes, we have drafted a briefing paper and some frequently asked questions and a toolkit of supporting documents including template letters for you to use.

You can also visit our dedicated page on connect by clicking here.

We are also planning a series of training sessions and information sessions to help you understand the new policy. Our Staffside colleagues are also willing to support their members to understand the changes.

Please take some time to read the new policy and the supporting documents and look out for the training sessions. You can contact the HR team for further information.

COVID-19 Bulletin: Wednesday 9 September

This is our weekly bulletin and will be issued every Wednesday. Please use this bulletin and cascade arrangements within care and corporate groups to guide your actions. We are determined to reduce avoidable harm and death in the people we are taking care of. Kindness remains the guiding principle of all the actions in our work to tackle the virus – kindness in how we look after patients, visitors, and one another.

Numbers not statistics: Today’s totals (last week’s data)

 1. How are you?

Really – how are you? Taking time out look after your mental health and wellbeing is something that can sometimes be overlooked. As we move through this pandemic, we recognise the importance of finding the time to reflect and build resilience.

The Recharge Booth is a ‘virtual’ space that allows you to come together with others, to reflect, recharge, decompress, and join a safe and confidential discussion. Hosted by Richard Burnell, it runs every Thursday at 2pm, sharing stories from different colleagues over a 20-30 minute session.

For more information please contact Richard Burnell on 07747 144874, Angharad MacGregor on 07976 322893 or Claire Hubbard on 07866004575. Alternatively, if you would like to be part of the Recharge Booth, drop an email to swbh.rechargebooth@nhs.net. A WebEx invite will be sent to your outlook diary, and you will simply need to click on the ‘join’ button to enter.

 2. Consideration of plans to re-introduce visiting

The Trust is considering how we best re-introduce visiting in a careful and controlled way, recognising that the safety of patients, staff and visitors is paramount. With cases increasing locally we need to be particularly mindful of how we do this, but we also recognise the impact on patients and their relatives with our current restrictions.

Currently we are considering plans to further increase our visiting allowances within critical care, maternity and paediatrics. We will share confirmed plans once they are agreed. We will then consider how we could ease restrictions for people with a long length of stay, recognising the impact on being isolated in a hospital / community bed for those patients. At all stages we will monitor cases in the community and government guidelines to ensure that we don’t introduce unnecessary risk.

For the time being our current restrictions remain with allowance for birthing partners, one parent of a child, end of life patients and visitors of those who lack mental capacity.

3. Infection Prevention and Control (IPC) guidance update

Following new national IPC guidance for the remobilisation of services within health and care settings, informed by local and national prevalence and incidence data, we have begun the process of reviewing our current IPC guidance and processes and are actively looking to see where we can make possible changes.

Colleagues can remain assured that physical distancing of two metres is considered standard practice in all health and care settings and colleagues may choose to wear higher levels of PPE following their individual risk assessment.  For full details of changes to the guidance please click here

4. Support colleagues with children affected by school closures

With schools having restarted recently and the threat of outbreaks of COVID-19 remaining there is a risk of further community outbreaks leading to temporary school closures. Colleagues who have caring responsibilities for children in schools affected by any temporary closures should ensure they notify their line managers as soon as possible.

Line managers will discuss the working arrangements possible to ensure that colleagues are supported through this difficult time. This may involve allowing colleagues to work from home or take carers leave, annual leave, parental leave or accrued toil.

Public health guidance should always be followed for any household that has a suspected or confirmed COVID-19 infection.

5. Swabbing: A ‘how to’ guide

It is vital that inpatients are not only placed in the right care environment (Red, Lilac, Blue ward) but also that swabbing is carried out appropriately and effectively in each environment.

Remember:

• Every patient MUST be swabbed on admission.
• Patients on Lilac wards MUST be swabbed every 3 days.
• Patients on Blue wards MUST be swabbed every 5 days.

Follow the Trust’s pathway here.

How a swab is collected is also extremely important. The team has produced a quick ‘how to’ video that shows you how to collect and package a PCR swab for Coronavirus.
Click below to watch the short film:

6. Research update

The R&D Department continue to recruit patients to COVID studies and the Trust is still receiving approaches about new studies. We continue to prioritise studies that have been classed as having Urgent Public Health (UPH) status by the CMO.

The SIREN study which is open to staff is one of these UPH studies and now aims to recruit 100,000 staff members in the coming months. The overall aim of this study is 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. You will get the results of your samples.

To register an interest to take part in the study visit this link. If you have colleagues who don’t access email, you can print the form and either take it to a member of the research team (we have offices in the Clinical Research Facility at Sandwell; D46 and BTC at City) or pop in the internal post to the SIREN Study Team, Clinical Research Facility, Sandwell General Hospital. Alternatively call 6657 or email swbh.randd.staffresearch@nhs.net to book an appointment.

Restart of the pre-COVID diverse research portfolio is underway and studies are being reviewed for re-opening to check for changes to the patient pathway. One of the questions we are asking is whether the patients can be seen in the Clinical Research Facility at Sandwell. The CRF has new Visionable ready monitors for virtual clinics. Do please contact Gina Dutton or Julie Colley if you would like to see the facilities.

7. Changes to car parking at Sandwell and City

To allow construction to begin on our new multi storey car parks at City and Sandwell, car park closures have come into effect at both sites.

The closures are as follows:

• City Hospital – The main staff car park has been reduced in size, all spaces to the right of the barriers (the area nearest the Birmingham & Midland Eye Centre) has been cordoned off. Plenty of additional parking is available at the rear of Summerfield House, around Brookfield House, at the rear of the old Laundry building and in the sunken gardens car park.
• Sandwell Hospital – The consultants car park has been closed completely and the outpatients car park has been partially closed.

Additional guaranteed car parking spaces are available free of charge at New Square for Sandwell based staff. Please contact the car park admin office on ext. 6424 to apply for a New Square permit.

For more information on the parking provisions please contact Diane Alford at diane.alford@nhs.net.

Heartbeat: Critical care take research to heart

At the height of the pandemic, many colleagues were redeployed to areas where they were needed the most to help fight COVID-19.

One such area was critical care where colleagues were treating our sickest patients. Over 300 colleagues were redeployed to critical care coming from areas including theatres, outpatients and research and development.

Heartbeat caught up with Dean Farrington, one of the ward managers in critical care, who told us more. He said: “Dealing with the pandemic was quite unprecedented for us all. We knew we needed to plan quickly to ensure we had the right amount of staff in the department to cover the shifts and enable colleagues to have deserved breaks. We were pleased with the colleagues who joined us – they were so willing to learn and support our work.”

Sharon Clarke and Shakila Rasool, Practice Development Sisters in critical care were instrumental in ensuring the redeployed teams received the training they required. Sharon explained: “We put on a two-day programme to enable colleagues to work within critical care. We also felt it was really important for everyone to have a thorough induction to the team and to make them feel part of the team.

“Initially, we had 300 colleagues join us and as the pandemic eased this was scaled down to 17. We have been able to provide these colleagues with an extended training programme to enhance their knowledge and skills further.

“Overall, the redeployment into critical care was successful. The redeployed teams were fantastic, always willing to learn and had a smile even during the most difficult times. It must have been very challenging for them to join a completely new team, and they handled it exceptionally.”

One of the colleagues who joined the critical care team is Research Nurse, Brian Gammon who had last worked in critical care over 20 years ago. He recalled: “It was extremely exciting and nerve-wracking to be called back. Credit due to Dean and the team who made us all feel welcome by helping us settle in and provide us with a list of agreed competencies.

“Research has played a huge part in the fight against COVID-19, and it is pleasing to see the organisation playing a role in the national trials. As a research nurse, I was struck by how my colleagues in critical care were so willing to accommodate trial related work. Everyone took on the role of recruitment to study trials very readily as part of their role, seeing it as being a part of everyday clinical practice. This approach to recruitment of patients is having a huge impact on patient outcomes.

“As a research team, we plan to continue to work closely with critical care as well as other teams across the Trust to enable us to keep up the momentum of having research at the heart of what we do.”