Monthly archives: March 2022

Familial hypercholesterolemia survey

The Central and South Genomic Medicine Service Alliance have developed a survey aimed at clinical and non-clinical colleagues who may have contact with patients who have familial hypercholesterolemia (FH). FH is a genetic condition that runs in families. Having FH means someone will have higher cholesterol and will be at a higher risk of cardiac disease.

The survey is designed to find out how much colleagues know about FH and what the knowledge gaps may be. The results of the survey will be used to guide the development of educational resources for staff who work with FH patients. The survey should take approximately five minutes to complete and be accessed by clicking here.

Sepsis reset week bake off: 30 March

On Wednesday 30 March, the acute medicine short stay unit (previously Newton 5) will be hosting a bake off competition. The unit are encouraging colleagues to bring in their sepsis themed cakes.

Anyone bringing in cakes should drop them to the unit by 11.30am ready for judging in the afternoon.

For more information please email claire.obiakor@nhs.net.

Essential IT maintenance affecting Wi-Fi across all sites, 22 March from midnight tonight to 2am

Please be aware an essential IT software upgrade to the Trust’s Wi-Fi controllers is taking place from midnight tonight to 2am to help improve the performance of the supporting infrastructure. This activity will affect Wi-Fi on all our sites including City, Sandwell, Rowley and all remote community sites.

During this time Unity will remain fully available and colleagues that access computers/devices via a LAN network cable will be unaffected. 

However, from approximately 12.20am – 2am each Wi-Fi access point will go offline sequentially for 10 minutes resulting in all devices that log to the network via Wi-Fi becoming unavailable. During this time any computers/devices logged on will automatically look for another WAP in your ward/department to connect to but this will take a few minutes. This will affect all wireless devices throughout Sandwell, City, Rowley and all our community Sites.

• We would recommend that colleagues save any work by midnight
• If able to do so please use an alternative device that connects via a LAN network ethernet cable.
• If you are required to record clinical care and unable to do so during this time then please revert to your BCP and utilise your 724 machine; or contact the duty manager via (City bleep 5401 and Sandwell bleep 6216) for guidance.
• Colleagues who are emergency bleep app users should revert to BCP and utilise a radio where possible; although the impact to Bleeps should be minimal.

Note: This will affect all colleagues working the night shift from 7pm on Tuesday 22 March

The activity will be closely monitored throughout and desktop alerts will be issued from 11pm advising of the works and at completion.

Please do call the 24 hour IT service desk on ext. 4050 or 0121 507 4050 if you have any further queries or experience any issues after the works have taken place

New project to support mental illness across Black Country and West Birmingham

A project is now underway to support identified patients with serious mental illness (SMI). These patients in the Black Country and West Birmingham have 15-18 years shorter life expectancy due to premature deaths from preventable physical illnesses. They also tend to not engage with routine care services and utilise emergency care when their needs become urgent.

The personalised care project is being clinically led by James Gwilt, Lead GP from Your Health Partnership and has involved setting up a small team of colleagues to deliver personalised care. This team is known as the Living Well Team and includes Social Prescribing Link Workers, a Care Coordinator, a Health and Wellbeing Coach and a Mental Health Practitioner. These roles are new and probably not readily recognised or understood by many clinicians. If you would like to understand more about this model of care please click here or see Personalised Care Additional Roles slides

The model is based on the design principles that patient preferences matter and that healthcare professionals do not always understand the healthcare decisions patients would make. The team will initially work with SMI patients, identified from the SMI register using techniques such as shared decision making, motivational interviewing and care coordination. This project will be evaluated as it develops, with a view to rolling the model out to other identified local population groups with poor health outcomes.

Changes to mandatory moving and handling training from April

Classroom mandatory moving and handling training will recommence from April and the temporary provision of the PowerPoint training will cease to be used to credit practical moving and handling.

All colleagues will need to complete their eLearning via ESR (non-clinical, level 1/clinical colleagues, level 1 and 2). Practical assessments will be carried out in the classroom or by the local trainers for areas that have one. Dates and times for competency assessments can be found on ESR. These will need to be booked prior to attending. Colleagues will not be credited for their eLearning when attending the practical assessments.

For further information regarding ESR specifically, please email swbh.esrhelpdesk@nhs.net.

The moving and handling team will support all areas if they wish to arrange dates and times that are suitable to both for attending individual areas to provide team competency assessments.

Note: Please remember if a colleagues fail a competency assessment they will be invited back to attend a full training session.

For further details please email karen.morsley@nhs.net or alternatively call 07973360225 or 0121 507 6025.

University of Birmingham ePAD support now available

For all nursing practice assessors supporting University of Birmingham pre-registration nursing students there are now colleague support sessions regarding ePAD facilitated by the University of Birmingham every Wednesday, 1pm – 2pm via the Zoom platform which can be accessed by clicking here.

For more information please email uobepad@contacts.bham.ac.uk.

If you require guidance regarding ePAD please click here or alternatively visit the Connect page.

Outlook 365 – organising your archive

In the past, when there was a need to archive emails, colleagues were supported to create outlook archives, often saved as PST files. These files provided a locally stored archive of emails that the user could access as needed. As we migrate to the cloud and no longer use local archives, there is a need to ensure these archives are moved back in to NHSmail.

To support this change, NHSmail now includes an ‘Archive’ section to all accounts, allowing colleagues to move emails that they need to retain out away from locally stored ‘PST files’ and back in to their NHSmail account without using their inbox allowance.

NHSmail archives allow users to store up to 100gb of emails, as opposed to the 4gb limits on main email accounts.

If you believe you may have emails stored in PST archive files, please follow the instructions in the following document to move them in to your NHSmail archive.

PST user guide for Online Archive

If you would like support from the IT servicedesk to complete this, you can contact the team on ext. 4050 or 0121 507 4050.

Chief Executive’s Message – Friday 18 March

I’m pleased to begin this week’s update with some messages of congratulations. Well done to nurse Janice Cartwright who has successfully completed the Professional Nurse Advocate (PNA) training programme. PNA training provides participants with the skills to facilitate restorative supervision to their colleagues and teams, in nursing and beyond, equipping them to listen and understand challenges and demands of fellow colleagues, and to lead, support and deliver quality improvement initiatives in response.

I also want to congratulate Daren Fradgley for being successful in an external appointment process and will be confirmed into the substantive position of the Chief Integration Officer for the Trust from the start of April 2022. Daren joined us on an interim basis in October 2021, from Walsall Healthcare NHS Trust, where he was Deputy CEO and latterly acting chief executive, so he brings strong Board level experience to the team. Daren will continue to lead on the development of the place-based partnership in Sandwell, which is the vehicle for driving forwards much of our Population strategic objective, providing seamless care for our patients and populations.  As part of this role, he will also be the executive lead for primary care and community services delivery in the Trust. The post is funded by all the statutory agencies in Sandwell, which is a vote of confidence in our ability to act as a host for the partnership, long term.

Nothing ever stays the same for long in NHS leadership, so it is right that I share some news about Dr David Carruthers, who has confirmed to me his intention to step down as Medical Director at the end of August as it has always been his plan to retire this year. David has been our Medical Director for the past four years and is a leader that I know many of us look up to, for his integrity, his work ethic, his commitment to patients and his support for all those working in the Trust, particularly our medical colleagues. The process of appointment for David’s successor will be underway shortly and there will be ample opportunity for us all to convey our thanks and appreciation to David in coming months before his departure.

Many of you will be affected personally by the situation in Ukraine and the refugee crisis in neighbouring countries, and I know lots of you are doing all you can to help this heartbreaking situation. Thank you for that. Closer to home, I know that many colleagues will be already impacted by the rise in the cost of living that has the potential to become more severe as a result of increasing energy costs, fuel costs and the war in Ukraine. NHS England and NHS Employers are reviewing what support can and should be provided for NHS staff who are struggling and we will review their guidance as it develops.  We are also discussing a consistent approach to recognition of these spiralling costs, across our Black Country system.  I should be able to share something with you on this shortly.  I wanted you all to be aware that the Trust can and does offer support to people who are in particular financial distress. Support can be requested through your line manager who can talk to our HR colleagues about any assistance that the Trust can offer. If you think there is more that we could do across the Trust to help colleagues in these difficult times please let executive colleagues know.

The latest update on where to get vaccinated

COVID-19 vaccinations are still available right here at the Trust. It’s not too late to get vaccinated. Here’s the latest information on when and where you can get your vaccinations.

Note: The City vaccination hub has moved to the occupational health unit, next door to cardiac rehab, ground floor, Sheldon Block. You will need to come through the main entrance to Sheldon Block and the hub is located through the double doors on the right.

Pfizer vaccinations are available at the Tipton and City vaccination hubs for staff, patients and the following groups:

• Over 75s, residential care residents and immunosuppressed individuals: All patients aged 75+, residential care residents and immunosuppressed individuals will be able to have a 2^nd booster, they can book via the national booking system or walk in to a hub.
• 5-11 year old children: From Monday 4 April all 5-11 year old children can have the COVID-19 vaccine, they can book via the National Booking System or walk in to a hub.

Pop-up clinics are also taking place at Sandwell Hospital in the Quiet Room (main entrance) on a Thursday and Friday throughout April for staff and patients aged 12 years and above, between 8.30am – 4.30pm.

Astra Zeneca is available for those eligible. For Astra Zeneca vaccinations, please phone the hub on 0121 507 4404 to book into a clinic.

Plans to test our incident response expected during April

With the Commonwealth Games coming to our region this summer from 28 July – 8 August, it is a requirement to test the incident response of all organisations who have a responsibility to protect and serve the public. External exercises have already been run to test emergency responders such as police, fire and ambulance, and we have been advised there will be a test involving our Trust at some point during April.

The aim of the exercise is to test local resilience across the Midlands, to ensure the region (and we) could cope with a major incident consisting of many causalities. Hence there will be an unannounced four day exercise in April run through our tactical team, which will require support from all areas. We will be expected to simulate the response for our services in real time, and will be completing a workbook with responses returned to the CCG.

To ensure your area responds appropriately and effectively please take an action now to ensure your team is familiar with the emergency planning polices and protocols relating to your service. At the start of the exercise a text notification will go out entitled ‘Exercise Exercise SWB Incident Alert’ with instructions of what you need to do. Please respond promptly as response times are logged.

If you are unsure what you should do in the event of a major incident, please speak to your line manager as a priority. The Trust has comprehensive plans in place for major incidents which are updated, checked and tested by the groups they relate to. It is everyone’s individual responsibility to know what they should do in the event of an emergency.