Monthly archives: May 2022

Level 4 Associate Project Manager Training Programme

Provek have now opened their Level 4 associate project manager training programme to applicants just in time for PDR season!

Associate Project Manager is a 13-month programme which develops the technical skills and professional behaviours needed to manage projects effectively in challenging delivery environments.

Provek have been procured under the NHS Project Futures programme to deliver this apprenticeship across the NHS.

For further details please see Provek Level 4 Associate Project Manager information sheet.

For more information, please email Maxine.griffiths@nhs.net.

Summit spectacular at Snowdon – raising funds for Your Trust Charity

To raise funds for Your Trust Charity, colleagues are invited to conquer Mount Snowdon, which at 3,500ft is the highest peak in Britain outside the Scottish Highlands.

Dates available are:

• Saturday 2 July: Daytime challenge – up to 5 spaces available. You need to book by Friday 10 June
• Saturday 8 October: Starlight overnight challenge – up to 15 spaces available. You need to book by Friday 30 September

These events are being organised by Your Trust Charity’s partner Birmingham Community Healthcare Charity. They will need to have received a £50 registration fee per person by the booking deadline. This fee includes your event costs, coach travel from Birmingham City centre, lunch and snacks, and the guides on the mountain. In addition, Your Trust Charity will invite you to raise a minimum target of £50 per person (or £200 for a team of 4) and will support you to set up your own JustGiving page.

For more information and to book your place, please email trustcharity@nhs.net.

Unity iBus services maintenance (Capacity Management/Capman): 25 May, 8pm – 9.30pm

Our support vendor Cerner will be carrying out an essential hardware maintenance to the Trust’s Unity servers on 25 May from 8pm to 9.30pm, however Unity and all associated systems will remain online and fully operational.

We are not expecting any impact to any of our clinical systems during this planned maintenance and all related services including Capacity Management, Medical devices that link into Unity and CareAware Reporting (Capman PI) should remain fully available as normal. 

Please be assured the activity will be closely monitored by Cerner and 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.

Plain Film referral guidelines and Cardex guidance for clinical colleagues

We ask that all clinical colleagues (in particular those who work in imaging) who  request plain film imaging, familiarise themselves with the latest ​Plain Film referral guidelines and Cardex guidance​ if they haven’t done so already. As you will notice, we have merged both into one document and updated some of the guidance so it is it in line with current practices.

Note: This document will also be circulated to all relevant GP colleagues who do not have access to the Trust intranet.

This guidance is also available on the Connect homepage under the imaging team section.

For further information please call ext. 3336 (Sandwell) or 4723 (City). Alternatively you can email cheryldickson1@nhs.net (Sandwell), alicia.taylor@nhs.net (City) or carrie.goodship@nhs.net (Sandwell).

Star Awards 2022: Clinical Team of the Year

Do you know a team that has provided consistent, high-quality care whilst meeting financial and operational targets, demonstrating best practice or driving forward improvements in patient care or has pulled together through particularly difficult circumstances?

Why not nominate them for Clinical Team of the Year at this year’s upcoming Star Awards!

Complete the online nomination form by clicking here.

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Nominations close on Friday 3 June.

Last year’s winners of this prestigious award were the COVID Intensive Care Team and the Children’s Speech and Language Team

The COVID Intensive Care Team were recoginsed for redesigning how they worked enabling safe and effective team working with many people that would not have ever been on intensive care before during the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite this, they were able to deliver care to our sickest patients.

Children’s Speech and Language Team were recognised for managing to keep their service running despite the pandemic, keeping waiting times down to within 18 weeks for an initial appointment.

Be sure to also check out this short video showcasing last year’s glitzy awards event.

If you have any questions, please contact the communications team on 0121 507 5303 or email swbh.comms@nhs.net.

Have you thought of going for a lunchtime walk at City?

It’s never too late to start exercising so why not start with a lunchtime walk around the canal route by City Hospital? Walking can help you feel happier and also has numerous health benefits, plus the route is very scenic.

Be sure to check out this short video by Medical Illustration to find out more about the route itself.

Note: The walk should take no longer than 30 minutes and a mapped route can be found by clicking here if you are unsure of where to go.

IT upgrade affecting Alfresco: 7 June from 7pm to midnight

Please be aware an essential database software upgrade will be taking place on Tuesday 7 June affecting Alfresco. The work is being carried out by our support vendor and is scheduled to begin at 7pm and should be completed just after midnight. This is required to apply essential bug fixes.

For up to 5 hours during this time Alfresco scanned legacy case notes and episodic paper folders linked from CSS and Unity will be unavailable. All other documents stored directly in Unity and CSS will be unaffected.  The activity has been scheduled at this time to minimise impact to our outpatient clinics.

The activity will be closely monitored by our support vendor and IT support teams.

Temporary closure of City entrance\exit on Dudley Road this weekend

The entry and exit point to City Hospital directly from Dudley Road will be closed off completely on the weekend of 28 – 29 May for essential road works.

Any colleague needing to access the BTC area over those weekends will need to use the entrance on Western Road.

Colleagues are reminded to plan for delays when travelling to and from City Hospital on this weekend.

We apologise for any inconvenience this may cause.

Falls and pressure ulcer serious incident investigation training

We will be hosting falls and pressure ulcer serious incident investigation training aimed at band 6 colleagues or above who lead on fall or pressure ulcer serious incident investigations in their ward, area or department.

The training session will include:

• An understanding of why incidents occur, and what we can learn from them
• How events are classed as serious incidents and what this means
• What evidence to collect and how to represent this
• How we support people involved and affected by the event
• Analysing the evidence so that root causes and contributory factors are identified
• How to write up the final investigation report

Sessions will run from 10am – 1pm on the following dates with each session limited to ten people per session:

• Wednesday 24 August, clinical skills, Postgraduate Centre, City
• Wednesday 21 September, room 15, Sandwell Education Centre

To book a session or to find out more, please email swb-tr.RiskManagement@nhs.net.

Heartbeat: New exec sponsor encourages colleagues to speak up and be heard

Freedom to Speak Up (FTSU) provides a national framework that NHS trusts use to empower colleagues to raise concerns. It aims to develop open and supportive cultures that encourage staff to share patient care, quality, or safety issues.

Our organisation is diverse – it’s a melting pot of people and experiences. As such, we want colleagues to feel safe to raise concerns regardless of their background or role.

We have Speak Up Guardians in place and several ways people can raise concerns, including via our staff networks, the chaplaincy, union representatives, our executive team, Heartbeat or our non-executive lead, Lesley Writtle.

Support for Freedom to Speak Up has recently been bolstered as Dinah McLannahan, Chief Finance Officer, has taken on being the executive lead for FTSU at SWB. We caught up with her to find out how she is getting to grips with her new role.

“I see my key role as executive lead being oversight of the speak up function in the Trust, supporting our Speak Up Lead and Freedom to Speak Up Guardians in their roles,” Dinah told us. “I have a responsibility to ensure that FTSU is well resourced, that it has the capacity and capability to triangulate information and ensuring there is a regular voice heard at our Board meetings.

“Above all, this role is about holding me, my executive and non-executive colleagues to account for our behaviour in relation to FTSU and our teams and how we handle matters of concern raised to us. These changes will ensure we have the right organisational culture towards speaking up in our Trust.”

Dinah has wasted no time getting plans underway to ensure our FTSU framework is as effective as possible. She explained: “I have begun planning – we took a paper to Public Board in April that sets out our 30, 60 and 100-day actions. This was agreed by the Board, and we are now beginning to implement our plans.

“We have a new FTSU Lead in the Trust, Emma Barton, who is working full time on this. Emma has also agreed to the action plan, and she will be providing regular updates directly to Board. I have met with most of the Freedom to Speak up Guardians for an initial conversation about where we are with FTSU currently from their point of view. I also meet regularly with Lesley Writtle, our Trust Vice-Chair and Non-Executive Lead for Freedom to Speak Up at SWB.”

Dinah added: “FTSU is so important to me. Our job is to provide high-quality patient care. We achieve that, I think, by having psychologically safe environments with happy, productive and engaged colleagues. That is not possible without having the right approach to being able to speak up when things are not right.

“It is fundamental to everything we do. I have practised this philosophy in my team since I joined the Trust. I regularly reinforce to my team the importance of speaking up if something is bothering them, and if we can do something about it, we do.

“If I had one key message, it is to please speak up if you have a concern at work. Ideally this should be to your line manager, but if that isn’t possible there are many ways in which you can raise a concern – please search Speak Up on Connect to find out more. Alternatively, you can contact me at dinah.mclannahan@nhs.net or on 07816 535761.”