Monthly archives: June 2022

Community Contact Centre moving to Care Navigation Centre

From Monday 27 June the Community Contact Centre will merge in to the Care Navigation Centre as part of a move to incorporate a single point of access for adult community services.

Whilst there is no plan currently to change referral processes or contact numbers, colleagues are reminded that they will be presented with the new service name and list of options when dialing through.

Care Navigation Centre Number: 0121 507 2664

For Community Services once connected press 3 and then the option for the service you require:

• Option 1 – District Nurse Message Taking
• Option 2 – Foot Health
• Option 3 – Physiotherapy
• Option 4 – Heart Failure & Respiratory
• Option 5 – Integrated Care Services

Should you have any queries please contact sandwell.adminhub@nhs.net

Maintenance affecting pathology service: 28 June, 5am – 6.30am

Please be aware that essential IT infrastructure maintenance is taking place on Tuesday 28 June between 5am – 6.30am which will affect the pathology service at Sandwell and City.

During the maintenance, Unity will remain fully available; however, from 5am – 6.30am on Tuesday 28 June colleagues will need to revert to requesting microbiology tests and Blood Bank requests on paper forms as well as on Unity.

Paper requests will be required to process pathology samples during the maintenance period and as soon as the maintenance is complete, orders will be booked in electronically and reported through to message centre ready for endorsement. Colleagues can continue to make ICE requests during the downtime but there will be a delay receiving results. 

Urgent results will be phoned to the affected users during the downtime.

The activity will be closely monitored, and desktop alerts will be issued from 4am advising colleagues of the need to revert to BCP for requesting microbiology tests and blood bank requests during the maintenance.

Should you have any further queries then please do call the Pathology Team on 0121 507 6600 or email on swbh.pathology-it@nhs.net.

Job of the week: Band 8A stroke clinical lead role (secondment)

There is an exciting secondment role for a ward manager with at least a years’ experience in leading a team well, who wants to develop further. This role is about excellent leadership, fundamentals of care delivery and team development. In addition it involves objectives, working with a whole pathway, collaborative working and will stretch and enable development for an aspiring future matron.

The role is for 6 months, based on stroke wards at Sandwell. The stroke pathway involves a patient journey from an unexpected admission from A&E, acute care and rehabilitation care; this encompasses a variety of transitions in patient journey as well as nursing skills and close collaborative working with allied professionals. There are lots of opportunities to make a difference to the patient journey for stroke patients and each part of the patient journey requires specialist skills from the MDT.

This roles offers:

• Close mentoring from the stroke/neurology matron to develop your wider understanding of stroke/neurology pathway and areas of influence
• Great development for an aspiring matron with clear objectives
• Clear objectives to demonstrate your leadership ability and provide a structured supportive culture
• Opportunity to focus on our current stroke rehab pathway and work collaboratively with a wider exposure within the role.
• Change management experience through visual leadership, strong clinical presence and effective communication

If you’re passionate about driving the patient care agenda and fundamentals of care, confident to lead and want to develop further this is a great opportunity to showcase your skills.

Essential requirements:

• A minimum of a years’ experience leading a team
• Demonstrable evidence of change management
• Line managers support for secondment

If you are interested in the role, please email Julie.Thompson40@nhs.net.

The closing date for this vacancy is Thursday 30 June with interview scheduled to take place week commencing on Monday 4 July.

What to do if you come in contact with a positive COVID-19 when not wearing a face mask

Due to the step down of surgical face masks in some wards and areas, colleagues should follow the below actions if they’re not wearing a face mask and have contact with a positive case of COVID-19.

• Daily lateral flow test to be taken for seven days
• Fluid resistant surgical masks to be worn for seven days

Note: If a patient is a contact of a positive colleague, they would also be a contact and would need to be monitored for symptoms and lateral flow daily.

Job of the week: Falls management practitioner (secondment)

We are currently seeking a registered Allied Health Professional or registered nurse to undertake the role of falls management practitioner in this six-month secondment post. This is an exciting opportunity to gain valuable experience in all aspects falls management. The post is suitable for band 6 AHPs or nurses who have an interest in falls prevention and management with experience of quality improvement. The applicant should be committed to high standards of care delivery, clinical quality and continuous improvement in patient safety. This is an opportunity to broaden their knowledge and skills in falls prevention and management. A minimum of 2 years’ experience at Band 6 is desirable.

There will be opportunity to join the regional falls network and complete on-site visits to other falls services. This offers an ideal opportunity to broaden experiences, learn from others, share knowledge and skills.

Further information can be found on the job listing on trac: Falls Prevention Specialist AHP/Nurse

For more information please email lesley.mcdonagh@nhs.net.

Heartbeat: Trust amongst first in the world to conduct research trial in chronic pain

Research is a significant part of medicine as the world pushes forward to understand medical conditions, find answers for why they develop and ultimately discover new treatments to help patients. In this our Trust has always ensured research is a key part of what we do, and in some areas, notably cardiology, we have often led the way.

However, amongst all the research that has been done and is ongoing, one area has been less explored, which is the reason pain management specialists Dr Arasu Rayen and Dr Beth Fitzmaurice chose to run a feasibility trial within their chronic pain population to see if whole-body photo biomodulation therapy can be used effectively in treating chronic pain. Photo biomodulation is a method of treating patients with specific wavelengths from the light spectrum.

A team of 14 colleagues including clinicians and data experts are involved in the trial, which sees patients rest for sessions of up to 20 minutes at a time (approximately three times a week) on a bed of ‘lights’ – similar to a sunbed. The trial is for patients with chronic pain, specifically patients with fibromyalgia. Throughout the trial 20 patients will complete six weeks of therapy, provisionally due to conclude this summer.

Chronic pain, which is pain endured for more than three months, is difficult to treat. There are a limited number of treatments for treating chronic pain including medications, physiotherapy, psychology and injections, and there is still an unmet need to treat chronic pain.

Working for the Trust for over 20 years as a consultant Dr Rayen chose medicine as a career because he describes himself as a ‘people’s person’ who gets pleasure in helping others. Practicing medicine and being a doctor encompasses all that he is passionate about. He has a long-held interest in research and explained: “I am always interested in providing the best and evidence-based treatment for the patients under my care. Good, well thought out, sensible, reproducible research gives us the opportunity to find new modalities of treatment. Following this trial our long-term plan is to continue this trend of doing research and set up rolling research program for pain management in the Trust. If photo biomodulation is proved to be effective, we will aim to get this service permanently in our hospital.”

Dr Fitzmaurice has always had a curiosity towards research, and after commencing chronic pain training, she says it quickly became evident there were massive treatment gaps for these patients which made her feel she had to do more to help. She explained: “I love the idea of creating something ‘new’ as a standard in the world of pain, which requires research in order to make it accessible and free to all.

“I am hoping to complete a PhD alongside my research which is set to include a review article of fibromyalgia patients’ experience of their pain management. Upon completion of this feasibility trial, we hope to use the results to calculate numbers for the next part of a larger multi-site double blinded placebo-controlled randomised trial. This will ultimately determine whether this therapy is effective and hopefully be the first step towards getting this therapy into the NHS, so it is widely accessible to those who need it.

“I’ve always felt at home at this Trust. From the chronic pain side of things there is such a breadth of exposure which is an excellent experience for my training. Research is not commonly undertaken by anaesthetic and pain trainees and if it weren’t for the massive support I received from the anaesthetics department which I work in, it most certainly wouldn’t have been possible. The department have nurtured and encouraged me to ‘act-up’ into more senior positions which has been invaluable. I feel I have found my niche in the speciality of chronic pain which I find very rewarding.”

Dietitians Week continues

Dietitians Week aims to raise awareness of dietitians and the invaluable work they do at SWB.

• Dietitians and the dietetic workforce support patients at every life stage from babies to older people and every stage in between
• All patients admitted to our hospitals who are tube fed at home should be referred to a dietitian via “referral to inpatient dietitian” under Requests/Rare plans on Unity within 24 hours of admission
• This is vitally important so we can monitor and adjust their tube feeds in accordance with their acute condition
• When carrying out nutrition screening on Unity (MUST or STAMP depending on age) there is now an additional question asking if your patient is tube fed. If they are, it will then prompt you to ensure they are referred to the dietitian.

Lockable bike pods now available – don’t forget to remove your lock

At both City and Sandwell, we have installed blue, lockable bike pods that colleagues are welcome to use to store their bikes. Colleagues should bring their own padlocks should they want to use the bike pods. These bike pods are available on a first come, first served basis.

Note: We must remind colleagues not to leave their padlocks on the pods when they are not in use. Please remove your lock at the end of your working day so that others have a chance to use them. This will be monitored, and locks will be removed if necessary.

Maintenance affecting Unity: 23 June, 5am – 6am

Our support vendor Cerner will be carrying out an essential hardware maintenance to the Trust’s Unity database servers on Thursday 23 June, 5am – 6am to apply the latest IT security patches to ensure we remain compliant.

Note: We are not expecting any impact and all related Unity services 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.

Refugee Week in Birmingham

Celebrating Sanctuary Birmingham will be facilitating a variety of events across the region to celebrate Refugee Week.

This year to mark the anniversary and 20 Years of Refugee Week in Birmingham a week long festival of events featuring some of the UK’s finest musicians and artists originating from around the globe is taking place. A broad range of high quality artists will be performing from: Morocco, Poland, Ukraine, Senegal, Sudan, DR Congo, Slovakia, Zimbabwe, Colombia, Gambia, Cameroon, Palestine and the UK. A mix of traditional and contemporary music and arts will make this year’s festival one to remember, with something for everyone!

To find out about what is going on near you please see the  Refugee Week Programme.