Monthly archives: January 2022

Did you miss out on the Christmas treats?

As a little treat just before Christmas our volunteers toured our sites sharing tins of chocolates for every ward, team and department across our Trust, but if you missed out on the little sugary treats now is your time.

We have some of the tins of chocolates remaining that we would like to share with those teams who might have been missed out when we first went round.

If your team did not receive any of the chocolates just before Christmas, please take the opportunity to contact Andy Brierley by emailing  andy.brierley@nhs.net with details of your team and he will arrange for chocolates to be available for you to collect.

Surgical services listening event today at 1pm

In July 2021, every colleague in our organisation was given the opportunity to take part in the Quarterly Pulse survey; just over 21 per cent of colleagues completed their survey with 1,552 anonymous responses flooding in.

Today (Tuesday 18 January) 1pm – 2pm, the surgical services group will be holding a listening event that will see the leadership team outline the main findings from the Pulse survey results. This session aims to listen to colleague feedback and ask how we can make changes to ensure we make our organisation a great place to work.

You can access an overview of the results by clicking here.

Click here to join the event

City wellbeing hub and massage service – change in venue

The City Hospital wellbeing hub has now relocated to above Arches, 1^st Floor, Corridor A (old physiotherapy corridor), Room B002/F/049.

Wellbeing hub: Focusing on ensuring that colleagues have a good day every day, the new hubs aim to help improve mental health, relieve stress, build resilience and restore balance.

Recognising that colleagues need to be able to access services easily, the new hubs are set to provide much needed Health and Wellbeing for colleagues closer to their work base.

Services in the new wellbeing hubs will include:

• Confidential chat – an opportunity for colleagues to offload and talk about anything which is troubling them
• Meditation
• Relaxation POD (massage chair)
• Back, Hips, Leg Massager

The wellbeing hub is a completely confidential, all services and treatments are free of charge for Trust colleagues and delivered by trained wellbeing coaches.

The wellbeing hubs will be a regular service weekly across all the sites listed below between 8am – 4pm:

• Mondays – Jayne Wright Therapy Room, Trinity House, Sandwell
• Wednesdays – Rowley Regis Hospital – Therapy room Archer, 1^st floor, Rowley Regis Hospital
• Fridays – Wellbeing Hub, above Arches, 1^st Floor, Corridor A (old physiotherapy corridor) Room B002/F/049 situated to the right of the corridor, City Hospital
• Monday – Friday – The Sanctuary, Unett Street, Smethwick B66 3SY

If you would like to register your interest and book in to one of the sessions contact the wellbeing team on 0121 507 5886 or 0121 507 3854. Alternatively, you can email Jatinder.sekhon@nhs.net.

You can still get your flu jab on site!

With the hustle and bustle of 2021, you may not have had chance to get your flu jab. But now we’re at the beginning of a brand-new year and there’s some good news. It’s not too late to get protected from flu, we’re still offering flu vaccinations right here at the Trust. You don’t even need to book an appointment, simply walk straight in – it couldn’t be easier.

Our vaccination centres are open seven days a week, here are the latest opening hours:

Star of the Week: Jamil Johnson

Our Star of the Week is Jamil Johnson, Senior Charge Nurse.

The palliative care team are in the midst of a large QI project aimed at improving the quality of end of life care across the Trust. We have needed dedicated staff from the hospital wards to be involved in the project, to support it, champion it and contribute ideas to take the work forward.

Jamil has been involved from early on in the QI process and from the start has stood out as enthusiastic, engaged, and passionate about delivering and improving end of life care on the ward he works in as well as in the wider trust. He is always keen to share his ideas and contribute, attending meetings when asked and able to give honest critical feedback from his knowledge of the ward environment.

On his ward D27 he has embraced the use of the new palliative care dashboard that been developed through the QI process, and used it through safety huddles that run on the ward, piloting its use for improving quality in end of life care and has seen very positive results. Using this he has managed to identify areas for improvement such as the percentage of people who die who have a supportive care plan in place, a marker of early recognition and good care for someone approaching the end of life. He has been able to use the dashboard, along with his personal enthusiasm and commitment, to encourage, focus and motivate his team to make improvements. Jamil and his team on D27 are making great progress to becoming exemplars of end of life care delivery for the Trust.

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.

Neonatal Community Outreach Team (NCOT) service launches 17 January

The Neonatal Community Outreach Team (NCOT) service officially launches today (Monday 17 January).

The service aims to:

• To facilitate early discharge from hospital of babies with on-going medical/nursing needs
• To promote a smooth transition from the hospital environment to home
• To safely and effectively prepare the parents to be confident and competent in the care of their baby at home
• To keep baby and family together to promote the development of baby and close and loving relationships.

The inclusion criteria for the service includes babies who are:

• Maintaining temperature in cot for over 24 hours
• No longer needing monitoring for apnoea’s (off caffeine for 24-48 hours)
• Establishing oral feeds, requiring some naso gastric feeds (completing 50 per cent oral suck feeds)
• Babies greater than or equal to 34 weeks gestation
• Weight of greater than or equal to1.6kg (less at consultant discretion), gaining weight and neonatal consultant happy with weight gain
• Requiring supplementary oxygen, where oxygen saturations are stable in a set amount of oxygen, evidenced by a satisfactory overnight oxygen saturation download prior to discharge and reviewed by chronic lung disease consultant prior to discharge who agrees for home oxygen. Discharge planning meeting with multidisciplinary team including chronic lung disease consultant, NCOT, discharge planner, health visitor and parents should take place prior to plan discharge.
• Babies requiring Home Phototherapy who fulfil the guideline criteria
• Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome patients, weaned from morphine and not requiring morphine as a medication at time of discharge to NCOT.

For further information and referral enquiries please email swbh.ncot@nhs.net. Alternatively you can call 07870384017 or 07866934720.

Chief Executive’s Message – Friday 14 January

Firstly, my sincere apologies to those colleagues who were expecting to catch up with me this morning at City Hospital during one of my regular open coffee sessions. The M6 traffic conspired against me and resulted in a two hour journey to work meaning that I was over an hour late. I am sorry if you were hoping to meet with me this morning. Do check out the other sessions coming up  or drop me an email if you have a more urgent matter you would like to discuss.

You will see in our regular COVID-19 bulletins that there is quite a lot changing at present as we continue to respond to the impact of the pandemic and the rapid transmission of the Omicron variant. In order to help clarify our essential messages I have highlighted these important changes below:

1. Changes to PPE: FFP3 masks are now standard on our inpatient wards when providing direct clinical care. Please ensure you follow this enhanced IPC guidance to keep yourselves and your patients safe.
2. Changes to self-isolation and staff testing: Regular testing (LAMP or LFT) remains mandatory. There are some changes to the length of self-isolation periods following having COVID-19 and if you are vaccinated and a contact of a COVID-19 positive case. Make sure you know the latest rules. Our workforce team and Trust managers will be contacting people who are off work isolating to make sure we know your expected date of return so that we can plan for staff absences. Reducing self-isolation is helping us have better staffed teams in place although it still remain challenging in many areas.
3. Mask wearing for inpatients: We have now mandated mask wearing for inpatients other than when eating, drinking and sleeping or for those who are clinically exempt. Please ensure that your patients follow this new requirement.
4. Limiting visiting: Visiting is once more restricted in our ward areas apart from for one parent / guardian with a child, those at end of life, birthing partners during labour and for those who lack mental capacity.
5. Mandatory vaccination: The new national legislation requiring all healthcare workers to be doubly vaccinated comes into force on 1 April. It is therefore essential that all SWB staff have their first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine by 3 February in order to ensure that you are fully vaccinated in time. Letters are going out now to all staff where we have no record of your vaccination status. Please respond so we can update our records. If you have concerns join one of our Q&A sessions and if you are not yet vaccinated please do so asap. On site clinics are running daily and you can walk-in or book an appointment.

More detail around these key points can be found in our COVID-19 bulletins and on Connect. I know it is extremely pressured across our services at present, but we are, as a system, seeing demand for care track along the base case, rather than the medium or worse case which is good news.

Thank you for your continued support as we continue to work hard to manage COVID-19 patients safely in the community and in our hospitals.

Richard Beeken

8×8 Softphone system scheduled maintenance taking place this Saturday

Scheduled maintenance is due to take place affecting the 8×8 softphone cloud-based phone system on Saturday 15 January from 6am to 8am. However no downtime is expected.

The maintenance will only affect the speech analytics aspect of the system which is not currently in use by the Trust.

We are not expecting any impact and the 8×8 system should remain fully available as normal.  Please be assured the activity will be closely monitored by our IT Support teams who will ensure all services remain fully available.

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

Changes to ordering and supply of gravity IV administration sets from Monday 17 January

From Monday 17 January, all areas will move permanently from Becton Dickinson (BD) gravity sets to Braun Gravity Safesets due to ongoing issues with BD supply. These gravity administration sets were used in spring 2021, but for further information on their use, and changes to order codes, please ensure colleagues have access to the poster below.

Intrafix SafeSet IFU information sheet

Colleagues can also watch a training video by clicking here.

Note: Any current stocks of BD sets can be used up before moving over to the Braun safesets.

Did you know?… 30% of people in hospital are in their last year of life – speak to your patients about their care plan

Think about the patients on your ward; use the SPICT tool in UNITY to identify those who may have a short prognosis.

At SWB we advocate using the Supportive Care Plan for patients likely to be in the last year of life, to guide and document open communications with patients about their future care and preferences.  The care plan can should be written in conjunction with the patient, after a sensitive and honest dialogue about your expectations for their health going forward, and can be used for people who are in the last months, weeks or days of life.  It is vital that the information contained in the SCP is then shared with other teams looking after the patient, for example their GP or community palliative care team.  A good place to document the discussion would be on the discharge summary, but if the patient is expected to die very quickly a telephone call to the patients GP is also very helpful.

In order to use the SCP at the right time for the right patients, we need to identify patients who could have a short prognosis.  We advocate using the SPICT tool, which is also available on Unity, to identify patients who are deteriorating, and are likely to have increased care needs.

If we are able to have these conversations with patients in a timely manner we have the opportunity to shape their future care so that we meet their needs and wishes as they approach the final phase of their lives.