Monthly archives: November 2021

Are you still having issues with microbiology and blood bank reports in Unity?

In case you were unaware, there was an issue with microbiology and blood bank reports where some reports are available in Unity but some are not.

The main issue has now been resolved  but if you are unable to find a microbiology or blood bank report in Unity then please speak with microbiology lab or blood transfusion lab.

Users can contact the microbiology lab by calling 01902 307999 and when promoted enter ext. 88257.

Users can contact the blood transfusion lab by calling 0121 507 4251 (City) or 0121 507 3110 (Sandwell).

Have your departing colleagues returned their Trust ID card and fob?

On leaving the Trust any ID card, name badge or PAC fob should be returned to the employee’s line manager.

These security fobs can be re-assigned/re-programmed for use by someone else; creating a considerable cost saving for the Trust. Therefore we are asking all departments/managers to check their areas to see if you have any of the PAC fobs in cupboards/drawers that could be returned for re-programming. ID cards and PAC fobs left unattended create a security risk.

If you find any in your areas please return to the:

• Main reception, Sandwell
• BTC reception, City
• Main Reception, Rowley

This also applies to ID badges for employees who have left the Trust as these can be taken off the system and destroyed which prevents the possibility of the ID badge falling into the wrong hands and being used to gain unauthorised access to areas, which is a breach of security.

For further information please email julie.green8@nhs.net or mark.lee1@nhs.net.

Heartbeat: View from the frontline

Working as RCP Chief Registrar at the Trust throughout the first two waves of COVID-19, Dr Vaishnavi Kumar – who has since rotated to work at UHB – recalls the challenges of the pandemic alongside the team spirit that kept her going.

She explained: “When the pandemic took hold and familiar routines changed beyond recognition, we had to adapt quickly to create new working practices that would keep us safe whilst we got on with treating and caring for our patients.

“My parents live in Leicester and having no other family of my own meant that I was able to form a bubble with them as they both work for the NHS (my father as an anaesthetist). Not having children myself to return to at home helped in a way to not feel worried about transmission after a shift looking after COVID patients. However, my grandparents – who I am very close to and used to visit most summers since my childhood – live in South India. Due to the pandemic, I was unable to travel to India to visit them. I unfortunately lost my grandfather earlier this year and again couldn’t attend his funeral as it was during the peak of the second wave of the pandemic. It has been quite challenging emotionally not being able to see him before he died and spend time with my remaining grandparents as they get older. Some of my family members became very unwell with COVID-19 during the peak in India and the struggles they had to receive timely healthcare reminded me of how incredibly fortunate we are to have the NHS.”

After graduating from medical school and completing foundation and core medical training, Vaishnavi is currently undertaking her five-year higher specialty training to specialise as a doctor in diabetes and endocrinology and General Internal Medicine (GIM). During her placement as chief registrar at SWB, she worked across general medicine (as the medical registrar) and her own specialty during clinical time whilst she trained in leadership and management during her nonclinical time as the chief registrar.

Her medical registrar role meant she had the responsibility of coordinating a team to provide emergency medical care for patients, managing unwell patients out of hours, working closely with the on-call medical consultants to highlight any issues and decide what to do next for each patient.

During the pandemic, Vaishnavi saw huge numbers of patients suffering from COVID-19, as the clinics around her speciality were put on pause to cope with the vast number of admissions.

“We have all gone through different emotions with each wave. The first time around, it was a huge shock, and we were dealing with a lot of uncertainty. At the same time, we felt enthusiastic about tackling it – we felt like we were doing something heroic, and the public sentiment echoed that.

“All specialty training for junior doctors like myself was on hold, and I could no longer practice in my specialty. I had to focus on the pandemic alone, alongside my colleagues. The impact of the pandemic could mean that we won’t have doctors progressing through training at the expected rate and becoming consultants, if we continue to see training paused during each wave.

“It was concerning as I was seeing colleagues and doctors becoming unwell with COVID too. We’re a caring profession – and this is our calling – but it’s really challenging seeing people my age or younger than me becoming so unwell and having to go into intensive care. I once saw a 21-year-old, with no other health problems, who didn’t make it.”

When talking about the mental health impact on staff, Vaishnavi says: “Talking about it helps, and my colleagues and I talk a lot. It’s brought us closer together and we’ve had the chance to work with people we wouldn’t usually work with. But equally, some days you get home, and you just need to have a good cry after holding it together at work.

“We were really fortunate at SWB; as we were given lots of support both from NHS Charities Together and generally to help look after us. We had access to counselling and talking therapy, even anonymously. The wellbeing team is well signposted internally.”

Fraud prevention: email scam

Colleagues may have received an email, purporting to have been issued by the infection control team but originating from an nhs.net email address outside of the organisation, advising of the rollout of a communicable disease management policy as a result of COVID-19.

Actions required by colleagues:

1. Do not click on the link within the email, and do not enter any personal information.
2. Report the email as per your organisation’s guidance, and delete it.
3. Where emails purport to have been issued from within your organisation or include links, hover your mouse over the source email address or the link to view the originating email address and actual file path to verify they are genuine.

All suspicions of fraud or bribery should be reported to the Local Counter Fraud Specialist Sophie Coster (Tel: 07436 268747), Chief Finance Officer Dinah McLannahan; or NHSCFA via 0800 028 40 60.

A reminder of our LGBTeaQ+ coffee mornings

Now running for a few weeks, this is a 30 minute safe space that is ICS wide, for all colleagues across The Black Country and West Birmingham ICS to get together, have a natter, expand social circles but most importantly create a region wide support structure in these still very chaotic times.

Join us every other Wednesday (next session on Wednesday 8 December, 10am via Zoom), grab a bevvy and your brekky and let’s start making connections! Further details including joining details. can be found by clicking here.

For more information please email Samuel.Skelding1@nhs.net or call 07788 362125.

World Aids Day memorial walking challenge

To show support for World Aids Day, join us as we host a memorial walking challenge throughout December to walk 36.3km. 36.3 million people have died from an AIDS related illness from the beginning of the epidemic in the early 80s to 2020.

World Aids Day is on 1 December each year, and is an opportunity for people worldwide to unite in the fight against HIV, to show support for people living with HIV, and to commemorate those who have died from an AIDS-related illness.

Structure the challenge to suit you. You may want to walk 1 or 2km a day, or have a longer walk each week, or even achieve it all in one go, it’s your challenge! It is open to all colleagues working across the Black Country and West Birmingham ICS, including here at SWB and would be great to see how many of us can take part to achieve our target! For all those registering with us to take part, we plan to send over a red ribbon, the universal symbol of awareness and support for people living with HIV.

Interested in getting involved? Drop an email to steven.chand@nhs.net and Samuel.skelding1@nhs.net with your name, job role and workplace

Stars of the Week: Luke Wildman, Ibrahim Suleiman and Anton Todd

Our Stars of the Week this Week are Luke Wildman and Ibrahim Suleiman, Security Officers, and Anton Todd, Security Team Leader.

Luke, Ibrahim and Anton all went above and beyond to safeguard the wellbeing of a patient and were all commended for demonstrating our care promises in the care of our patients.

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.

Chief Executive’s Message – Friday 26 November

What is “public service?”

I took this from the free dictionary on-line.  Other dictionaries are available….

“public service n.
1. Employment within a governmental system, especially within the civil service.
2. A service performed for the benefit of the public, especially by a not for profit organisation.
3. The business of supplying an essential commodity, such as water or electricity, or a service, such as communications or transportation, to the public”

I agreed with Ruth, our Director of Communications, that I would write about what it means to me to have spent an entire working life in public service.  This column will also provide the raw material for my Heartbeat column this month.  The reason why we both agreed this focus is because public servants are having a difficult, often torrid time at present.  Whatever your role in public service, be it nurse, police officer, paramedic, social worker, civil servant or senior manager, we are all faced by similar challenges and a more difficult backdrop to our work than we did as recently as five or ten years ago.  11 years of real terms funding cuts in government departments have led to a deterioration in most of the services we offer.  Self-induced workforce crises compound this problem, for example the mass exodus of the invaluable workforce in adult social care.  Public expectations continue to rise and these expectations cannot often be met.  Public dissatisfaction is leading to an abhorrent rise in violence and aggression towards public servants, the very same people who were applauded as essential workers during the first wave of the pandemic, are now vilified.

So why do we, colleagues at Sandwell & West Birmingham NHS Trust, continue to be public servants?  I do hope that most of you joined the service for the same reasons as me and that you will continue to work in public servants for the same reasons.  What are those reasons?  To explain that, I will need to tell you a brief story:

When I left University in the early 1990’s, graduates like me, with non-vocational qualifications (2nd class degree from Dundee University in Politics and Geography), often took to the “milk round” of interviews to join the graduate management training schemes of a whole variety of companies.  I elected to put myself through this because I was spending my post-University time spinning waltzer cars at a fairgrounds and drinking too much.  I needed to find a purpose.

One of the interviews I had was with Marks & Spencers.  The interview was barely 20 minutes in, when the interview chair said, and I quote: “we are going to stop the interview now, Mr Beeken”.  I asked why.  He said “because you and I both know, that you don’t want to work for this company do you?”.  I paused and then agreed with him.  I had realised, subconsciously at that point, that I did not want to spend the rest of my life, selling things that people didn’t need, to help other people than me, make money.  I went on to throw everything I had at the NHS management training scheme application process.  I got on the scheme, starting my first job at Darlington Memorial Hospital in County Durham.  That year was a good vintage.  The trainees I joined the NHS with that year include my predecessor at SWBH, Toby; Richard Kirby, CEO of Birmingham Community Trust and Suzie Bailey, Director of OD at the Kings Fund.   I’ve never looked back and never wanted to do anything else.

I remain committed to the values and ideals of the NHS and committed to strong public services to support the most disadvantaged in society.  I remain firmly of the belief that my main job as Chief Executive, is to create the working conditions for my colleagues that will enable them to release more of their time to care for the most disadvantaged and unwell people in our communities.  We all should also be bound together by the unshakeable belief that we have to protect the quality and resilience of the services we provide, because our family, friends and descendants, will need those services.  If we don’t continue as public servants, then who?

Action required – Essential Network maintenance affecting Bleep System on Saturday 27 November from 7:30am

Please be aware IT will be carrying out essential maintenance to the Trust’s bleeps paging system on Saturday 27 November from approximately 7:30am to 9:30am. This is required so that we may carry out a planned controlled fail-over of the bleep system to allow our support vendor to ensure the system is working correctly following some recent issues.

From approximately 7:30am on Saturday 27 November, the Bleep system at all Trust sites and the Smart Phone Bleep App will be temporarily unavailable for approximately 60 minutes, colleagues are advised to utilise radios during this time. Please collect radios in advance on Saturday morning and kindly return them to the Security control room once the maintenance has completed.

The activity will be closely monitored, and desktop alerts will be issued from 5am to remind colleagues and at completion.

 This will affect all staff working on Saturday 27 November

Please do call the 24-hour IT service desk if you have any queries on this on ext. 4050 or 0121 507 4050.

Colleagues share #SWBfamily experience

Across the Trust colleagues have been invited to share their experience of working for the Trust, with their team, delivering their service and coping through the pandemic. Sharing their opinions and thoughts anonymously has enabled them to participate in the national NHS staff survey and have their voice heard, so the Trust can act on any areas of concern, or showcase best practice to other organisations.

However action can only come from having significant feedback, and as the deadline for submissions close at midnight tonight (Friday 26 November) this is your last opportunity to fill in and submit your survey. To find the survey in your email just search NHS Staff Survey 2021 invitation.

The response rate to the national survey is a key indicator of staff engagement, so whether you have great things to say about your team, colleagues, wellbeing initiatives throughout the pandemic or provision of PPE, or if you feel the Trust has missed a trick and left you wanting, then this is your chance to get your views across. The results will be shared nationally and we expect significant media interest following publication, so please take part and put your point across.

Hear from colleagues Laura, Debbie, Vanessa and Shajahan below about why they completed their surveys.