Monthly archives: September 2021

World Sepsis Day: Do you know what you need to do to screen and treat Sepsis?

Today is World Sepsis Day, it’s an opportunity for people worldwide to unite in the fight against sepsis. Sepsis accounts for at least 11 million deaths worldwide annually. Yet, depending on country and education, sepsis is known only to 7 – 50% of the people.

Sepsis is a life-threatening reaction to an infection. It is the second most common cause of death in UK, second only to cardiovascular disease and it sadly remains one of the common causes of death here in at SWB. Sepsis kills 44,000 people in the UK every year but is treatable if caught early enough.

Across the Trust, we’ll be marking World Sepsis Day today by holding awareness raising sessions, pop by one of the stall today between 10am and 2pm to find out more about what you can do you screen and treat patients suffering from Sepsis.

Test your Sepsis knowledge by completing our Sepsis quiz: https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/SEPSISsept

Colleagues who are unsure of the sepsis screening processes are encouraged to speak to their ward matrons or contact the deteriorating patients and resus team on ext. 5908.

Learn more about sepsis

• https://sepsistrust.org/
• NICE Guidelines: Sepsis: recognition, diagnosis and early management: https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/ng5

IPM Patient Administration System\ORMIS upgrades due to take place this week

The IPM Patient Administration System and ORMIS are due to be upgraded this week from Friday 17 September through to Saturday 18 September. This essential upgrade will mean than both IPM and ORMIS will be unavailable from 10pm on Friday 17 through to 11am on Saturday 18 September.

During this period, Unity will remain fully available, however departments that rely on data from IPM and ORMIS will need to utilise their Business Continuity Plans. 

The upgrade of both systems is focussed on backend changes that improve stability and move the systems to new cloud based servers.

If you would like further information on the upgrade contact Yasmin Khan, Service Planning and Delivery Manager on yasmin.khan@nhs.net.

If you experience any other IT issues during the upgrade window, please contact the IT Service Desk which is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week on ext. 4050 or 0121 507 4050.

Virtual coroners court – wound care training: 7 October

The tissue viability service and colopolast have organised a virtual training session on Thursday 7 October, 1.30pm – 4.30pm centred around the nurses role in coroners court in relation to pressure damage. It is an ideal opportunity for colleagues to gain an insight into coroners court experience through a simulated court case led by a coroner.

For booking and information, please see virtual coroners court information sheet.

Office 365: Shared drives due to become read only on 24 September – Action required

On Friday 24 September we will be moving to our final stages of our move to Office 365 as we lock down our share drive locations to being read only and colleagues begin to use Microsoft Sharepoint as their document storage system.

As part of this move there are a number of tasks that colleagues must carry out before the move:

• Each department should by now have nominated a lead to support their move to Office 365, please ensure the name of this person has been forwarded on to penina.chiweshe@nhs.net
• Ensure that all essential files are saved securely to the network shares and not locally on desktops. Remember files stored on your desktops are not backed up and are at risk should there be a hardware failure.
• Files and folders should be organised clearly ready to be transferred to our new cloud solution.
• Documents that have exceeded their retention period and are no longer required for our records should be securely deleted.
• Colleagues should also ensure that their personal shares (h drive) are ready to be migrated over to Microsoft Onedrive and begin moving files as soon as possible. Please remember there is a maximum storage allocation of 2gb available to each staff member on Microsoft Onedrive.
• Files should only be migrated to Sharepoint when users are on site with their computers connected directly to the Trust network. Colleagues should not attempt to upload large numbers of documents in bulk to Sharepoint whilst connected to the Trust network via Pulse Secure VPN.

Training on the new system is available; colleagues can enrol on the online course by following the instructions here: https://connect2.swbh.nhs.uk/trustindigital/office-365-moving-to-the-cloud/accessing-training/

All files and folders will need to be transferred by the 24 September, after which the current shared drive locations will be locked to being read only.

For more information or support with your move to Office 365 contact the IT service desk on ext. 4050 or 0121 507 4050.

Heartbeat: Focused maternity care for vulnerable women

A new team of midwives looking after the most vulnerable pregnant women in the Trust’s area has been formed.

The Phoenix team will care for pregnant women who have mental health needs, have a history of substance and alcohol abuse, have undergone Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) and those who fall under the young parents category.

Elizabeth Kellie, from the team, said: “We already have midwives leading in these areas, and it was decided to put us all under one umbrella, to form a team so that we are able to deliver a better and more improved service.”

Elizabeth will look after women with mental health needs along with Olive Downer. Alison Byrne will continue in her role as FGM lead midwife, whilst Angela Arnold will care for women with substance and/or alcohol abuse. Fiona Rochelle,

Ashley Pederson-Gosling and Lyndsey Hemsley will continue working with young parents and Gail Fearnsides will support the team from an administrative point of view. The matron for the team is Shelly Colley.

Each have their own specialties and referrals will be direct to the specialty.

Elizabeth added: “Each of us have a different pathway in how our patients are treated and we will continue to follow that. In regard to the specialist mental health service we work closely with the perinatal mental health teams across the city, which is part of Birmingham and Solihull Mental Health Foundation Trust.

“We have future plans to develop the team as we recognise that there are vulnerabilities that our team do not cover at the moment, for instance refugees, women with learning disabilities and those experiencing domestic abuse. It’s important that we are able to reach them and care for them in a way which improves the quality of their lives.”

The team’s mission statement is: “We will value and empower women to blossom during their pregnancy so that their families flourish, creating a happy healthy future.”

Drug safety notice: Sarilumab – for intravenous administration in COVID-19 patients

Sarilumab is a human monoclonal antibody that specifically binds to interleukin-6 receptors and blocks the activity of pro-inflammatory cytokines. Sarilumab is typically given via the subcutaneous route, however for COVID-19 patients Sarilumab must be administered intravenously.

Note: Sarilumab is ONLY to be administered by nurses who are trained to administer monoclonal antibodies.

For further details please see Sarilumab information sheet.

For more information please contact the pharmacy department on ext. 5263/3783.

COVID-19 Bulletin: Friday 10 September

Numbers not statistics: This week (last week)

1. New: Complacency kills – Don’t drop your guard

After months donning masks, washing hands and keeping 2 metres away from everyone, the almost relentless focus on infection control can become exhausting but the fact remains that whilst the national lockdowns have subsided and face masks rules relaxed, there still remains a very real risk of catching COVID-19 or passing it on to your patients, colleagues and loved ones.

Colleagues should ensure they stick to the infection control practices that we have established, respectfully challenge colleagues and patients who fail to adhere to them and keep themselves and those around them safe.

Seven rules of Infection Control:

1. Hand Hygiene: Make sure you take the time to practice good hand hygiene, this means make sure your sleeves are rolled up, rings and watches off and you take the time to carefully wash your hands.
2. Wear your face masks: In the hot weather it can be all too easy to go without, but it’s critical to ensure that when you are in shared areas and in clinical spaces you wear your face masks and ensure you take the time to put them on properly, ensuring a good seal around the masks.
3. Bare below the elbows: Good hand hygiene and safe care can only be achieved by being bare below the elbows. This means that you must not wear watches or bracelets or jewellery that interferes with your ability to effectively wash your hands. This also includes removing ties, lanyards and accessories that pose a cross contamination risk moving from patient to patient.
4. Right PPE in the right environment: Make sure you take the time to wear the right PPE suitable for the task you are undertaking.
5. Test yourself for COVID-19 regularly: Weekly testing for COVID-19 is available for all staff which involves a painless saliva sample being submitted. This can provide you with proof and assurance that you are COVID-19 free and proof that your infection control practices are successfully keeping you safe from harm.
6. Regular patient swabbing is critical to providing the right care: It’s important that colleagues involved in the delivery of clinical care take the time to understand the swabbing pathways in use. These documents describe in details the schedules of swabbing that should apply to each patient depending on their circumstances. Swabbing ensures we are able to provide the right care to patients as well as ensuring that we are able to protect colleagues and patients around them.
7. Clean equipment is key to being able to provide safe and effective care: Follow the rules of the Use it, Clean It, Store it programme to continue providing safe care to our patients.

2. New: Use it, clean it, store it

https://vimeo.com/589809526/f4ddeb5a98

The regular cleaning of shared patient equipment is key to reducing the risk of cross infection between patients and staff.  Patient and staff equipment can harbour potentially harmful bacteria that is unseen to the naked eye.

By performing regular cleaning of equipment and using the green ‘I am clean’ labels  this will help to give both patients and our staff, confidence that equipment is clean and ready for use!

Remember that you need to clean patient equipment after every use and between each patient.

To keep equipment fully charged or to help to keep your ward or area neat and tidy, once you have cleaned, store it in the appropriate place.

So the next time you use a work station on wheels or a dinamap… clean it and store it….use it clean it store it!

Instructional videos on how to ‘Use, clean and store’ equipment is available on the following link:

• UCS – WoW
• UCS – Commode
• UCS – Patient Hoist
• UCS – Dinamap Blood Pressure Machine
• UCS – Blood Glucose Monitoring Box

3. New: Consultation on mandatory vaccination for frontline health and care staff

A consultation was launched yesterday 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

4. Updated: How to safely package your saliva test

Many of you have signed up to the weekly saliva (LAMP) testing programme – which is a speedy and accurate way of determining whether you have COVID-19.

You can book a kit collection slot for the weekly test which simply 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.

Here’s a pictorial guide on how to package your swab:

Uptake of the weekly saliva test is monitored to ensure we are doing everything we can to protect our patients, the public and each other.

You can also watch a video on how to do your saliva test here.

The latest data by group is below:

5. Reminder: Following the right guidance when working for more than one organisation

Some colleagues are in a position where they are working for more than one NHS organisation.

Colleagues are advised that, when working across our sites, it is our isolation guidance that must be adhered to, which is that anyone, regardless of vaccination status, who lives in the same household as a positive COVID-19 case must not return to work, apart from some agreed exemptions.

Exemptions are:

• Those working in critical care where the prolonged absence of staff risks the safety of providing clinical or care services.
• On that basis, the team will mitigate that risk by allowing those who’ve had direct contact with a household member who is COVID positive to return to work with restrictions in place. These include a negative PCR test and having no contact with non-COVID-19 patients.
• The decision to allow staff to attend work in other areas will be made on a case by case basis. A COVID-19 self-isolation exemption decision assessment will need to be completed by a line manager. It will also require authorisation by the Director of IPC/Deputy Director IPC or the on-call manager out-of-hours.

This decision will ensure we can continue to support safe patient care and the safety of all our colleagues.

For the protocol and guidance, click here.

6. Reminder: Boost your immunity this winter

As we head towards Autumn, it won’t be long until the flu season will be upon us. Not only will we need to shield ourselves against flu as we approach the latter end of the year, it’s also important to protect ourselves as much as possible from COVID-19.

Towards the end of September we will be offering the flu jab and COVID-19 booster to all colleagues here at the Trust. These free vaccinations are on offer to help protect yourselves, patients, colleagues and loved ones from flu and COVID-19.

More information on how to book your slot for these vaccinations will be released in due course so keep a look out in the daily communications bulletin and on Connect.

Boost your immunity this winter.

7. Reminder: COVID vaccination status for NHS staff entering care homes  

From 11 November 2021, all care home workers, and anyone entering a care home, will need to be fully vaccinated, unless they are exempt.

These new government regulations state that all care home staff are required to provide proof of having had two doses of an approved COVID-19 vaccine or that they fall within a specified exemption.  This applies to all CQC regulated care homes providing nursing or personal care in England.

All Trust staff (including temporary, voluntary, bank and agency staff) working to fulfil a service in a care home funded by the NHS are in scope of these regulations. This will include, but is not limited to:

• Primary care (general practice, dentistry, optometry and pharmacy), community health, mental health, learning disability and autism (MHLDA), acute teams providing outreach into care homes, non-emergency patient transport services, end of life community teams and staff attending to maintain medical equipment
• Staff not in a front-line caring role who visit a care home. For example, in relation to continuing health care or a training provider.

Under current vaccination guidance, eight weeks are required between the first and second vaccine dose. Therefore, all staff entering a care home for work – who are not exempt – need to have had their first dose by 16 September 2021 at the latest.

Line managers are asked to liaise with their teams who may be affected by these regulations to:

• Understand and document vaccination and exemption status of staff members
• Actively support uptake of vaccination ahead of 16 September 2021 and conduct supportive one to one conversations to establish reasons for vaccine hesitancy
• Carry out a risk assessment for staff and services impacted and actively plan workforce deployment for services. This is to avoid disruption to our service provision in care homes
• Ensure that relevant staff will be able to demonstrate, via the NHS app or otherwise, that they have either been fully vaccinated or are exempt from the requirement.

Further information/guidance can be obtained via Group HR Business Partners.

You can read the latest FAQs here.

Essential HIE Portal downtime from 8am, 15 September until 8am, 16 September

Please be aware an essential IT HIE Portal upgrade will be taking place from Wednesday 15 September. This will allow the Trust to benefit from the latest features and allow for future enhancements to take place in order to provide better patient care.

This will result in the HIE Portal that displays Unity and GP information being unavailable for up to 24 hours from 8am, Wednesday 15 September until 8am, Thursday 16 September. During this time GPs will be able to view some information via the GP Homepage and ICE. Trust clinicians will need to use the Summary Care Record to view medications prescribed by GPs. 

Please be assured the activity will be closely monitored at all times and is supported by our PCCT leads.

We apologise for any inconvenience this may cause.

Chief Executive’s Message – Friday 10 September

Dear colleagues

You may have by now seen our Chair, Sir David’s announcement confirming my appointment as the substantive Chief Executive of Sandwell & West Birmingham NHS Trust.

As you can imagine, I am personally delighted at this news. Leading our organisation over the last 6 months has been an enormous privilege. The Trust has so many qualities that make this prospect an exciting and challenging one in equal measure.  The economy of scale we have in our clinical services, the high quality clinical leadership and general management I see and work with every day, the service innovation in our specialist and community services, the welcoming and friendly vibe of the Trust and the opportunities afforded to us by the Midland Metropolitan University Hospital development, are all things on which we can build together. There are many other strengths besides. It will be an honour to lead the Trust and to build on the work led by my predecessor, Toby Lewis, with all of you.

I will be organising some sessions, both in person and virtually, to give anyone who wants to participate, the opportunity to hear about our emerging new strategy for the Trust and the immediate priorities I want to work on with you all, over the next 12-18 months. Of course, at these sessions, there will be plenty of opportunity for you to ask questions about those things and challenge my thinking if need be. Everyone needs to have a voice on how we tackle the immediate and long term local challenges in health and care over the coming years. Do look out for these sessions and come along if you can. As a reminder, our emerging new strategic objectives are:

• To be good or outstanding in our delivery of patient care and use of resources
• To cultivate happy, productive and engaged staff
• To work seamlessly with partners outside of the Trust, to improve life chances and health outcomes.

All of this is good, grand stuff. However, I am all too aware of the current overload we have on our urgent care services and the elective care backlogs we face.  This is putting incredible pressure on you all.  Moreover, I am also aware that against that backdrop, we have a tendency to ask too much of you, to state that everything is a priority. To that end, there are four, practical things that we need to prioritise together over the rest of this year and in 2022:

• To deliver the Midland Met, including the new care models and new clinical roles which will drive its success
• To recruit assertively into areas with chronic vacancy problems and agree a new way of doing things round here, encapsulated in new Trust Values which we will hold ourselves accountable for living and breathing
• To improve on the delivery of the “fundamentals of care”
• To develop and start to deliver, out of hospital service changes with other organisations in Sandwell and Ladywood/Perry Barr, to begin reversing the trend of deteriorating life expectancy locally.

Before I conclude this week’s message, just a few words on the urgent care pressures we are facing. It is little consolation, I am sure, to hear from me that every other Trust and local system in the Black Country and Birmingham is under the same strain. This week alone, we have seen:

• Over 110 patients in each of our EDs at any one time – this is dangerous overcrowding
• Patients requiring admission waiting at times, over 15 hours in ED following decision to admit
• Ambulance services with an unanswered call “stack” of over 600 at any one time
• Category 2 ambulance response times of many, many hours
• 111 services critically overloaded
• GP services critically overloaded

For every hour a patient who needs admitting waits in an ED, their chances of subsequent death increase by 0.75%. This is the situation we face and it is not yet even winter. We are stepping up our wider, system response to this including things like spot purchasing of care home beds with NHS money, increasing GP urgent care slots at each practice etc. However, there are things we can still do better as a Trust. One of those is the so called “simple and timely” discharges. We always deliver a decent number of discharges but it’s the timing of them that can improve. When the MDT Board rounds take place, do please have at the forefront of your minds how creative you can be about bringing forward the time of a discharge. As the figures above show, every hour counts. Every hour gained saves lives.

Have a good week

Richard

IT Maintenance affecting Clinical Audits reporting on 16 September, 6pm

Please be aware that essential IT maintenance will be taking place on Thursday 16 September, 6pm to the supporting infrastructure for the Clinical systems reporting system.

During the maintenance, Clinical Audits which is assessed via the Clinical Systems Reporting Webpage on Connect will be unavailable from 6pm for up to 1 hour.

The work is scheduled to begin at 6pm and should be completed by 8pm.

Should you have any queries on this then please contact the IT helpdesk on ext. 4050 or 0121 507 4050 for home workers.