Monthly archives: September 2021

Apprenticeship of the week: Trainee recruitment officer

Apprenticeships are open to anyone over the age of 16 – along with your current salary, you will undertake a training programme to gain a recognised award/qualification.

We are currently recruiting for a trainee recruitment officer. Click here for more information.

Please ensure you also complete the NHS Standard Application Form.

Note: The closing date for this role is Thursday 7 October.

For further details please contact the apprenticeship team by emailing swbh.apprenticeship@nhs.net or calling 0121 507 6425.

Don’t forget, apprenticeships are open to all colleagues of any age and all study will be within your working hours and your salary will not be adversely affected.

BAPIO silver jubilee celebration: 22 – 24 October

BAPIO will be hosting their silver jubilee celebration from 22 – 24 October at Edgbaston Cricket Stadium.

The event is aimed at consultants and middle grade colleagues at SWB.

For further details and to attend, please click here.

2022 diaries and wall planners now available

Diaries and calendars for 2022 are now in stock.  The codes for ordering these diaries and calendars are listed below and can be ordered via the NHS supply chain ordering system.

Note: Diaries and planners are non-returnable. These items are issued on a “first come first served”  basis as there will only be a limited amount available.

For more information please call ext. 4938.

Are you interested in spinal orthoses in-service training?

The orthotics department will be re-commencing in-house training on spinal orthoses including collars, CTOs and TLSOs.

The training is aimed at clinical colleagues and will include information required when referring to orthotics for a device following a spinal fracture and how to fit the various orthoses.

The first training session will be held on Tuesday 12 October, 2pm – 5pm in Clinical Skills room 1, Education Centre, Sandwell Hospital.

If you are interested in attending this training date or future training dates or want to find out more, please email swb-tr.SWBH-GM-Orthotics@nhs.net. Please include your name, job title, primary location and direct phone number in the email.

Heartbeat: Team embraces new ways of working during pandemic

The community children’s nurse team for special educational nursing needs (CCN SEN) care for children and young people with complex nursing needs in both special and mainstream schools and in the community. Here we shine the spotlight on the work the team does and how COVID-19 has affected the way they work over the past 18 months.

What do the CCN SEN team do and how many are in the team?

Our team consists of a mix of band 4 clinical workers to band 7 nurses, whilst we have two non-medical prescribers within our team. This has proved to be essential for children to be treated promptly at home and reducing hospital admissions.

Our role is extremely diverse; we care for those aged from 2 to 19, working across a variety of community settings including schools, homes, nurseries and hospitals. We work wherever is the best place to support the young person and family to enable the child to receive care closer to home. We will work with a wide range of professionals within the NHS, Sandwell Education, social services and the voluntary sector.

We are part of the community children’s therapies and nursing service which enables us to work closely with the multi-agency team and consultant paediatricians to achieve positive outcomes for our patients. For a lot of families we are the first point of access to services in Sandwell.

How has the pandemic affected the team’s way of working?

We have continued to work throughout the pandemic, home visiting and utilising video calls if possible. We have, like everyone else, learnt how to use video conferencing facilities. We were unable to deliver our usual face-to-face training sessions for our schools so have pushed forward online training which has been very successful. We have introduced a drive-through weigh clinic at each school and worked with consultant paediatricians and schools to identify the children who are clinically vulnerable and were required to initially shield during the first and second lockdowns. Once identified we made regular telephone calls to families to maintain contact and support. The team also supported the vaccination programme for adults within the community.

How have you developed partnerships to improve care?

We have developed a communication passport for children with complex special needs to be used when they attend appointments/hospital admissions. This was done in partnership with the paediatric speech and language therapists and the acute paediatric wards.

We have developed a 24 hour postural care pathway for use by the community therapists and nursing team. This supports the team to identify potential issues with pressure ulcers and prevent deterioration. It also has a pathway for children who have developed a pressure ulcer to ensure appropriate referrals, assessment and management.

What sort of feedback have you had from stakeholders and also patient families?

Parents are grateful for our service and are thankful that we will visit at home. We get excellent feedback from them and professionals about the care and support we have given.

Have you completed your SurgiNet training?

As the Trust continues to implement SurgiNet across the organisation it’s vital that colleagues complete their training if they haven’ t done so already. This includes ward staff, surgeons and anaesthetists plus colleagues who prepare patients for surgery using pre-operation checklists

For colleagues who require a face to face session please speak to your line manager.

For colleagues who have preference to completing e-learning, please see instructions in the eLearning courses quick start guide.

E-learning courses which are currently available are:

• Unity (SurgiNet) theatre practitioners and support assistants
• Surginet for ward colleagues
• Surgeons
• Anaesthesia

For further details regarding e-learning please email swbh.informaticsbookings@nhs.net.

For more information regarding SurgiNet, please click here to access the SurgiNet Connect pages.

Heartbeat: Neonatal awarded Unicef Baby Friendly accreditation

Our organisation strives to deliver excellent quality of care for our patients, young and old, and the neonatal team have done just that by achieving the first stage of Baby Friendly accreditation. Following in the footsteps of maternity services who hold full accreditation, neonatal are at the start of their journey with plans to keep going.

Unicef Baby Friendly accreditation is a globally recognised quality improvement programme to provide parents with the best possible care to build close and loving relationships with their baby and to feed their baby in ways which will support optimum health and development. The accreditation is implemented in stages over a number of years. At each stage organisations are externally assessed by Unicef UK. When all the stages are passed they are accredited as Baby Friendly.

Baby Friendly accreditation is part of the NHS long term plan ensuring everyone gets the best start in life. The award can be achieved for neonatal, maternity, health visiting and children’s centre services and will soon be available for children’s wards too.

Stage one involves building a firm foundation. This stage was led by Carmen Nuttall, Infant Feeding Lead for NNU and Louise Thompson, Infant Feeding Coordinator with huge support from the neonatal nursing and medical team.

Louise explains how the team achieved this, she said: “We ensured our policies and guidelines support baby friendly standards and we developed a training programme to allow colleagues to implement the standards according to their role.

“We demonstrated how we have processes for implementing, auditing and evaluating the standards and also ensure that there is no promotion of breastmilk substitutes, bottles, teats or dummies in any part of the facility or by any colleagues.

The team also have plans to keep going and achieve accreditation for the next stage. Carmen added: “BFI accreditation is an ongoing process; we have two years from stage one accreditation to achieve the next stage. Stage two involves ensuring at least 80 per cent of colleagues have received training and department colleagues and managers will be interviewed to ensure they understand and meet the baby friendly standards to provide the best care.”

Dr Sivakumar, Neonatal Clinical Director, said: “I sincerely thank the hard work and the commitment of our neonatal colleagues and our infant feeding team which helped us to achieve stage one Baby Friendly accreditation. This is a reflection of how well the baby and family friendly principles are embedded in each and every member of our team. We look forward to our amazing journey towards further stages of BFI accreditation.”

Issue affecting Pulse Secure and NHSmail resolved

The issue affecting Pulse Secure this morning has been fully resolved and normal service has resumed. Colleagues can simply reconnect Pulse by right clicking on the Pulse icon that you can find in the bottom right hand corner of the screen or in the start menu. Alternatively you can reboot the computer.

NHSmail outage affecting outgoing emails to external recipients

NHSmail has also suffered an outage this morning which may have prevented colleagues from being able to successfully send emails to external recipients.

During the hours of 6:30am and 10:30am, emails being sent to external recipients may have failed and colleagues affected should seek to confirm receipt of these messages, or look to resend the emails. Inbound emails remained unaffected during this outage and NHSmail have now confirmed that normal service has resumed.

If you have any other issues with IT services, please ensure you contact the IT service desk and log a ticket on ext. 4050 or 0121 507 4050.

We apologise for any inconvenience caused with the outages today.

Webinar: Introducing neutralizing monoclonal antibody treatment for patients with COVID-19

A new treatment (Ronapreve) which is a neutralising monoclonal antibody treatment will soon be available for inpatients.

A webinar will be taking place today (Wednesday 29 September) from 1.30pm – 2.30pm where colleagues can learn more about the treatment rationale,  pathways and prescribing information.

Panel members joining the webinar will include colleagues from the Medical Director’s Office, Pharmacy and Clinical Advisory Group.

Click here to join the webinar.

See below for treatment pathway and add on request process:

• Blood Sciences – Add on process v2.0
• Neutralising Monoclonal Antibody (nMAB) (Casirivimab and Imdevimab) Ronapreve Pathway V4

Please use alternate methods of referral for homeless patients on 1 October

If you need to refer a patient to the homeless team on Friday 1 October please use one of the community services listed below:

Day office hours support:

• Sandwell Council Accommodation Team (9am – 5pm): 0121 3681166
• Birmingham Council Accommodation Team (9am – 5pm): 0121 3037410 / 0121 6755531
• SIFA Fireside (Homeless Hub 9am -5pm): 0121 7661700
• Rough Sleepers Team – 0800 8807157

Out of hours (evenings after 5pm):

• Sandwell Council out of hours: 0121 569 6883
• Birmingham City Council out of hours: 0121 303 2296
• Rough Sleepers Team: 0800 8807157 (up to 11pm only)
• Streetlink (Rough Sleepers): 0300 500 0914 (up to 11pm only)
• Trident Reach – Washington Court Hostel: 0121 2265832

Note: Accommodation out of hours is not always guaranteed however they will be able to give you help and advice over the phone with a view to signposting patients once services re-open.

The homeless service will resume as normal on Monday 4 October and referrals can be made to any of the team listed below:

• Helen Taylor: 07580 677913 – helen.taylor54@nhs.net
• Louise Edwards: 07580 677884 – louise.edwards@nhs.net
• Sara Zurakowski: 07890 525689 – sara.zurakowski-lucas@nhs.net
• Dot Burgoyne: 07866 007538 – dot.burgoyne@nhs.net