Monthly archives: September 2021

Star of the Week: Nina Faraon

Our Star of the Week this week is Nina Faraon, TIA clinic nurse.

The TIA clinic sees patients with suspected mini stroke very quickly after their referral to us usually within 24h. It runs 7 days a week even over the weekends. This way we prevent major strokes from happening. Patients are reviewed clinically, have scans and are started immediately  appropriate medication. All through one very long appointment with us.

The clinic is one of the very few services that continued during the pandemic and Nina has played a pivotal role ensuring the service has been able to continue as it is. She balances the admin work  to coordinate the appointments and find the rooms at the outpatients.

Nina liaises with all our patients who invariably praise her manner and her nursing skills as she explains and reassures them. In addition to this, Nina does some of the data analysis for our performance to allow me to distribute the workload to the consultants in a fair and efficient manner.

Nina embodies truly the role of the modern nurse in our era and is a true asset for our team.

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.

Heartbeat: Doc wins £100k scholarships to world-famous university

Frontline colleague Dr Harun Khan has won two prestigious scholarships which will see him study at the world-famous Harvard University in America.

Dr Khan is one of only three people to ever hold both a Fulbright Award and a Kennedy Scholarship which will lead to the one-year placement at the private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

The scholarships, worth £100,000, are two of the most highly regarded in the world. Previous awardees of these scholarships include German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and American poet and civil rights activist Dr Maya Angelou.

Applying for them involved a lengthy process which included a detailed application and gruelling interviews, with one headed by the chief scientific advisor for the UK government.

Harun has been at the Trust since 2017 and has worked in the acute medicine unit, emergency department and is currently based in D27. He will study the Master’s of Public Health, which is the leading programme for public health in the world.

He said: “I have a strong interest in public health so I always planned to pursue postgraduate studies in this field since I was at medical school.

“My intention is to use my clinical practice, medical research and policy to advocate for under-represented minorities in the UK.

“As someone who was eligible for free school meals growing up, being awarded a full scholarship to attend Harvard is extraordinary.

“These types of scholarships are dominated by graduates and professionals who are socially elite in terms of social class. I hope my example can encourage others from a similar background to apply with full confidence. It’s also great to see my community celebrate this achievement, as I owe this win to them wholeheartedly! Being the third person in history to secure both scholarships to Harvard is an immense privilege. I also work in the education sector by supporting low-income students apply for higher education in the UK and embarking on this journey in front of these students is a responsibility that I do not take lightly.

“The scholarships themselves have so many benefits beyond just the financial. For example, they provide me with entry into exclusive networking and professional events by world leaders, so there are a lot of social benefits too.

“The Master’s will also give me an opportunity to undertake a work experience placement of which I would like to undertake at the United Nations in New York City or in affiliation with the United States Congress in Washington DC. I also plan to use my time in the US to improve my Spanish.”

Harun will leave the Trust in August, but intends to return to the UK.

“I have really enjoyed my time at the Trust and I may return. I intend to use my time at Harvard to learn more about health and public policy and how we can improve the outcomes of under-represented people by tackling inequity. I have received opportunities to work beyond the NHS since being awarded these scholarships, such as in governmental agencies, non-profit organisations and academic institutions, but I’m sure Harvard will help better define my next career move.”

He added: “I would like to thank Dr Sarbjit Clare and Dr Asif Naveed for supporting me through the early part of my professional journey. Despite their busy schedules, they have always been intentional about taking time out to support their juniors and lend an ear. They are true leaders that I hope to emulate one day. I would also like to thank Dr Viru Sadhunavar who, without trouble, swapped me out of a night shift in A&E, so that I could attend my Harvard scholarship interview!”

COVID-19 Bulletin: Friday 24 September

1. New: Boost your immunity this winter – flu jabs and COVID-19 boosters now available for colleagues

With the winter months fast approaching, it’s more important now than ever to protect yourself against flu and COVID.

Some of you may have already received text messages from your local primary care inviting you to book your COVID booster. Please be assured that flu jabs and COVID booster doses will be available to all colleagues from Monday 27 September.

Both vaccines are safe to have together and will be available for co-administration in our onsite vaccination hubs. Should you not wish to have both vaccines at the same time this can also be accommodated by booking two separate appointments. COVID-19 boosters will be Pfizer booster vaccines and those eligible include those who have had their second COVID-19 vaccine (including Pfizer or Astra Zeneca) and have no contraindications to the Pfizer vaccination.

Do you have a question? Click here to read the FAQ document.

Book your jab:

You can book your jab at one of our vaccination clinics. Clinics will be operating at City Vaccination Hub (Sheldon Block) and Sandwell Education Centre. An easy self-booking system is in place: Click here for the online booking system to register for your jab – all available time slots will be listed here.

Note: Peer vaccinators will also be visiting clinical areas to administer flu jabs but due to infection control procedures in place this provision may be limited.

The flu jab and COVID-19 booster is available to all SWB colleagues including students and temporary staff. Flu jabs are only available for Trust employees and you will need your NHS number to register for your vaccines. To find your NHS number, click here.

Receiving your COVID booster/flu jab elsewhere?

If you receive your COVID booster and/or flu vaccination elsewhere please ensure to have your place of work recorded as Sandwell and West Birmingham NHS Trust on the system at the time of vaccination. This will help keep your occupational health records updated and avoid any further chasing for having the jabs.

Remember you can still get your first COVID jab: City Hospital vaccination hub in Sheldon Block is open for those 18 or older who would like their first jab. The hub is open daily for both walk-ins and bookings via the national booking website.

If you have any other questions, contact occupational health on 0121 507 3306.

Boost your immunity this winter – get your flu jab and COVID-19 booster.

2. New: Take advantage of an hour a week for your wellbeing

Did you know that you have the opportunity to use an hour each week to focus on something that helps with wellbeing such as a learning and development activity, reading, walking, a team discussion or any other activity that supports your wellbeing?

The wellbeing hour applies to all colleagues who are employees of the Trust, regardless of their role, department or their location of work.

Frieza Mahmood, Chief People Officer, said: “Wellbeing hour was introduced in June following feedback and suggestions from colleagues in relation to what support they would like to see as part of the recovery process from the pandemic.

“The purpose of wellbeing hour is to create regular time during the working week for colleagues to focus on their wellbeing. Each team is encouraged to nominate one hour per week as a dedicated time for this.

“This hour must be discussed and agreed with the line manager to ensure that we are still able to deliver services with minimal disruption for patients and other colleagues. Activities can be done as a team or individually.

“We recognise that it can be challenging to find time to use the wellbeing hour when teams are so busy, however, we would really encourage colleagues and managers to talk to each other and find the best way to implement it where you work.”

There is so much you could do as part of wellbeing hour including:

• Online yoga
• Going for a walk (by yourself of with colleagues)
• Visiting the library
• Going to the gym
• Visiting the wellbeing sanctuary or one of the wellbeing hubs
• Doing an activity you enjoy.

Full guidance is available by clicking here. In areas that use e-roster, a shift type has been created within the e-rostering system in order for managers to record when colleagues are taking a wellbeing hour.

3. New: Updates to the trauma day case admission pathway

Our trauma day case (patch and plan) green pathway has recently been updated.

The trauma day case model is suitable for patients that are at a low anaesthetic risk, generally fit and well with limited co-morbidities who require surgery that is an approved day surgical procedure and do not otherwise require hospital admission.

These are the latest changes you need to be aware of:

• Trauma day case patients will be treated primarily on a green pathway.
• The trauma coordination team will be allocated five urgent PCR swabs (purple bags) per day that will be collected from pathology by the trauma coordination team. If additional urgent PCR COVID-19 swabs are required, the trauma coordination team will contact infection control and request authorisation for additional swabs.
• In the event swab results are not returned or there is no green capacity, patients will be admitted as an amber patient so as not to delay timely trauma treatment.

Full details about the pathway can be found here.

4. Reminder: LAMP testing keeps us safe

You should all be aware that our weekly saliva weekly testing programme is available to all colleagues. This non-invasive test that allows you to get reliable results on COVID-19 via a pain-free process.

Recently we’ve seen a drop in numbers of tests, and it’s a trend that’s been going on for some time now. If you’re back from some annual leave please make sure you get back in the flow and do your weekly test.

Start today!

You can register for LAMP testing and book in to a kit collection slot for the weekly test, which requires you to spit into a tube in the morning before you brush your teeth or an hour after you have eaten. When you arrive at work, you can deposit your sample into a red collection box. Many of these are positioned around our acute and community sites. And within 24-48 hours you will get a text message confidentially sent to you alerting you to your results. For a full list of drop off points and for details on how to register, click here.

This week’s LAMP data group breakdown

5. Reminder: New drug to treat COVID-19 soon to be made available

A new treatment (Ronapreve) which is a neutralising monoclonal antibody treatment will soon be available for inpatients who meet the following criteria.

Hospitalised patients are eligible to be considered for casirivimab and imdevimab (known by its brand name Ronapreve) if:

• SARS-CoV-2 infection is confirmed by polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test or where a multidisciplinary team has a high level of confidence that the clinical and/or radiological features suggest that COVID-19 is the most likely diagnosis

AND

• The patient has been hospitalised specifically for the management of acute symptoms of COVID-19

AND

• The patient is negative for baseline serum anti-spike (anti-S) antibodies against SARS-CoV-2

AND:

• EITHER Aged 50 and over; OR aged 12-49 AND determined to be immunocompromised by multi-disciplinary team assessment.

Note: We are expecting the drug to be made available for our admitted patients soon. A pathway is being developed to streamline its use.

6. Reminder: Consultation on mandatory vaccination for frontline health and care staff

A consultation was launched recently on protecting patients by mandating vaccination for frontline health and social care staff in England. It seeks to consult on whether vaccination should be made a condition of deployment for frontline workers in health and care settings.

The government is seeking views on plans for staff in health and care settings in England to be required to have COVID-19 and flu vaccines to protect vulnerable people.

The six-week consultation is looking at whether requirements should apply for health and wider social care workers: those in contact with patients and people receiving care. It would mean only those who are fully vaccinated, unless medically exempt, could be deployed to deliver health and care services. The consultation will also seek views on whether flu vaccines should be a requirement for health and care workers.

For more information please click here.

Chief Executive’s Message – Friday 24 September

This week has been a good one, but as ever, a tiring one for me and for most of you, I am sure.  There are four significant developments worthy of note from this week that I’d like to draw your attention to:

• Our COVID-19 inpatient numbers, both in acute beds and in critical care, are falling.  We are treating this with cautious optimism, but from a peak in early September of 95 inpatients, we have fallen incrementally to 56 as of Thursday.  Our contingency planning has involved the pulling down of elective Orthopaedic work, which was a decision we did not take lightly as a senior team.  The patients on those waiting lists are in considerable pain and have been waiting some months for surgery.  I am hopeful we can restart arthroplasty work again soon and we review our ability to do so, at least once per week
• The early work we have done on our new strategic objectives as a Trust, all designed to deliver on our core purpose (improving life chances and health outcomes) and on our vision (to be the most integrated healthcare organisation in the country) was well received at our Trust Leadership conference this week.  The event itself was a fantastic and motivating event and brought 130 senior leaders together on a face to face basis for the first time in 2 years.  We will be doing further engagement with all of you on those objectives and on our priorities, in the coming weeks.  Please watch out for the opportunities to participate in those events and provide your feedback and input
• I have announced that we will have a new executive director for our leading role in improving population health, starting on 11 October Daren Fradgley, Director of Integration and Deputy CEO at Walsall Healthcare, will be coming on secondment to our Trust, to lead the multi-agency response to integration of care pathways and primary prevention in Sandwell and as our executive lead for our work in this space in Birmingham, too.  Daren has led the development of the Walsall Together partnership, which has achieved impressive results on admission avoidance and home first discharge in a short period of time.  The post is being funded by all the local agencies, most notably Sandwell Council and the CCG.  This is an example of the new, outward facing world we must influence, as the biggest employer in the borough and as the largest healthcare provider in both Sandwell and Ladywood & Perry Barr
• The first phase of reviewing our workforce requirements for our once in a generation opportunity of the Midland Met, completed.  Thank you to all those who did so much hard work on this over the last few months.  Our task together between now and Christmas, is to review those establishments, and determine how we recruit to them, how we afford them financially and how we ensure they are reflective of what each clinical service or speciality is planning to achieve

Back-pay for annual leave payments

Over the past few years there have been a number of legal decisions that have shaped the law about how payments for annual leave should be calculated. These decisions prompted the national NHS Staff Council to consult with Trade Unions about how annual leave is calculated for staff employed within the NHS under Agenda for Change Terms and Conditions.

Earlier this year they reached an agreement where, if certain criteria is met, annual leave payments should include an average of overtime worked, as well as basic pay. The main criteria is:

a) You must be employed by an NHS Employer on 31 March 2021; and

b) You must have received payments in respect of “Overtime” in a minimum of four months out of any of the twelve months in the financial year 2019/2020 and/or 2020/2021. This will not apply to additional hours worked via the Trust Bank.

This criteria applies to annual leave between 1 April 2019 and 31 March 2021.

A number of employees will be receiving a payment on Monday and a letter to their home address letting them know about the forthcoming payment and the amount they will receive.

In the hopefully rare circumstances, where an employee does not believe that their overtime payments and any corrective payment has been correctly calculated, we would encourage conversations between staff and their line managers to address this issue in the first instance. Staff will need to provide evidence, for example, their pay slips, payments that they have received for either overtime, or additional standard time. This information is important to help us determine if you are eligible.

The FAQs may answer any queries or concerns you may have and if not and you are in receipt of a payment and have any queries about calculation of the payment or the deductions made please call the Payroll Department on 0121 507 6655 option 1 or for any other issues that cannot be addressed by the FAQ’s please call the HR Department on 0121 507 6680.

New Trust Director appointed: Daren Fradgley, Executive Director of Integration

The Trust has made an appointment to a new executive director position, following a competitive process. Daren Fradgley is taking up the position of Executive Director of Integration on an interim basis from 11 October. Daren joins us from Walsall Healthcare NHS Trust where he is Director of Integration and Deputy CEO.

Richard Beeken, Chief Executive, said: “ I am delighted to confirm Daren as Executive Director of Integration. This new role has been established to lead all of the place based partnership, activity, governance and development in Sandwell as well as being the main executive link to the place based partnership in Ladywood and Perry Barr. Daren has over 10 years’ experience in the NHS as an executive director and has retained his paramedic registration. I am sure you will join me in welcoming Daren to the organisation.”

Daren Fradgley said: “I am pleased to be taking up this new role and staying within the Black Country system. I am looking forward to bringing the excellent learning from developing the Walsall Together programme to Sandwell and working with new colleagues and partners to support delivery of the Trust’s vision of integrated care.”

Skies turn pink in Sandwell and West Birmingham for Organ Donation Week

Yesterday we turned the sky pink across its sites to raise awareness of organ donation.

The A&E department at Sandwell Hospital along with the Birmingham Treatment Centre and the Organ Donation Memorial in the Remembrance Gardens at City Hospital have been lit up as part of Organ Donation Week which runs from 20 to 26 September. The Light It Up Pink initiative is inspired by the colour of the NHS Organ Donor Register card.

The organ donation team at the Trust, which runs the hospitals, hopes it will encourage staff and residents to talk about the subject, and share with their families their decisions on the matter.

Currently, 70,119 people in Sandwell and West Birmingham are already on the NHS Organ Donor Register. However, people need to tell their family to help ensure their family supports their decision, if they are approached about organ donation by a specialist nurse in hospital.

In May 2020, the law around organ donation in England changed to an ‘opt out’ system. This means that a person would be willing to donate their organs, unless they have opted out, are in one of the excluded groups or have told their family they do not want to donate.

To find out more and register your decision, visit: www.organdonation.nhs.uk. Alternatively, users of the NHS app, can use this to record, check and update your details and organ donation decision.

Flu jabs and COVID-19 boosters soon to be available for colleagues

Plans are in place to start the roll out of flu jabs and COVID boosters for all colleagues from next week initially at City Hospital from Monday 27 September. Vaccinations are expected to start at Sandwell Hospital from Monday 4 October. Some of you may have already received text messages from your local primary care inviting you to book your COVID booster – we will share more information on how to book your jab at work as soon as our vaccine supplies arrive (expected Friday 24 September).

Receiving your COVID booster/flu jab elsewhere?

If you receive your COVID booster and/or flu vaccination elsewhere please ensure to have your place of work recorded as Sandwell and West Birmingham NHS Trust on the system at the time of vaccination. This will help keep your occupational health records updated and avoid any further chasing for having the jabs.

If you have any other questions, contact occupational health on 0121 507 3306. Boost your immunity this winter – get your flu jab and COVID-19 booster.

Unity – Results Only Encounters

Encounters in Unity with an encounter type of ‘Results Only’ are used to show documents, radiology reports and certain other results in Unity, they are clearly identified as ‘Results Only’ in the encounter search and will have an encounter FIN of ‘RES_RXK Number’ or ‘DOC_RXK Number’ as illustrated below.

These encounters are created when external documents such as radiology reports are sent in to Unity.  However, these encounters must not be used for placing orders and requests against as they will not get communicated to the receiving department.

Unity now includes a warning message that is presented to colleagues if an order is attempted against a ‘results only’ encounter, the following alert will be displayed and any unsigned orders will be removed from the orders scratchpad automatically.

To place an order or request, always ensure you have the appropriate encounter selected – it is recommended to select from a patient list, or worklist (such as Care Compass or Doctors Worklist) to ensure the appropriate encounter is selected

Teamtalk Staff Briefing – October 2021

TeamTalk took place yesterday (Wednesday 22 September) where colleagues were briefed on national and regional updates as well as the latest news regarding COVID-19.

If you were not able to make the session you can download a copy of the briefing presentation below and watch the TeamTalk video.

• TeamTalk October 2021
• Teamtalk October Feedback form – Treating patients safely this winter