Skip to content Skip to main menu Skip to utility menu

Monthly archives: September 2022

Prosthetists and Orthotists Day: 7 September

 

Our team of orthotists will be hosting an awareness stand at Sandwell main reception on Wednesday 7 September, 12.30pm – 4pm showcasing and talking about what orthotists do here at SWB.

For more information please call ext. 2784.

Annual General Meeting 2022 taking place today from 4pm

 

This will be a virtual meeting on MS Teams. To register for the meeting please follow this link.

The meeting will include:

  • A review of the year by the Chief Executive, Richard Beeken.
  • The opportunity to put questions to the Trust Board members.
  • Information about the regeneration plans surrounding the new Midland Metropolitan University Hospital.

To submit a question to the Trust Board or for more information about the AGM please contact daniel.conway4@nhs.net.

We look forward to you joining the meeting.

World Sepsis Day – prevention saves lives

 

With World Sepsis Day fast approaching on Tuesday 13 September, throughout the week we will be sharing useful information and resources around sepsis. World Sepsis Day is an awareness day which aims to remind people of the detrimental impact sepsis can have as sepsis is one the top causes of preventable deaths worldwide.

Prevention is better than a cure – there are many actions which can be taken to try and prevent sepsis. These include:

  • Staying up to date with all your vaccinations
  • Clean water
  • Hand hygiene
  • Safe childbirth
  • Preventing hospital acquired infections

Festival of Rescue: 30 September and 1 October

 

West Midlands Fire Service will be hosting this year’s ‘Festival of Rescue’ on behalf of the United Kingdom Rescue Organisation.

The free event will be taking place at Smithfield Birmingham and will be open to all on Friday 30 September and Sat 1 October.

It will involve hundreds of firefighters, from nearly 40 UK fire and rescue services, competing across a wide range of rescue disciplines.

To find out more and attend, please click here.

Are your details up to date ahead of the launch of Allocate and Loop?

 

Due to the implementation of Allocate and Loop, please can all colleagues ensure their contact details on ESR are up to date.

Your contact number and address can be found and updated by:

  • Logging into ESR
  • Clicking on the ‘My Personal Information’ drop down on the main page
  • Click on ‘Update my contact details’

A step by step guide on how to find and update your contact details can be found here: managing personal details information sheet.

Moving to Allocate – rollout of new Trust rostering system

 

In September our contract for our current Temporary Staffing system (TempRE) for medical colleagues will cease and we will be moving to a new platform known as Allocate.

Allocate is a new, fully featured end to end rostering platform designed with colleagues in mind, focused on supporting colleagues and rota coordinators to work together seamlessly to develop rosters that meet our safe staffing requirements.

Whilst the move to rollout Allocate to Nursing specialties will take a phased approach starting with BMEC Theatres, D21, D25, Eliza Tinsley, McCarthy ward and Leasowes in September, colleagues involved in medical temporary staffing (Bank and Agency) across the Trust will go live on Allocate on Monday 12 September.

Colleagues involved in temporary medical staffing are advised:

  • Any shifts taking place prior to Monday 12 September will still need to be authorised via TempRE before the contract expires at end of September.
  • Any shifts worked after the Monday 12 September go live must be authorised/processed via the new allocate system.
  • Failure to authorise or process shifts before Monday 26 September may result in late payments.

Full guidance on how shifts can be booked, processed and authorised will be shared in the communications bulletin.

If you have any questions please contact your group rota co-ordinators or alternatively contact the Allocate team on swbh.allocatequeries-helpdesk@nhs.net

World Sepsis Day – common sources of sepsis

 

With World Sepsis Day fast approaching on Tuesday 13 September, throughout the week we will be sharing useful information and resources around sepsis. World Sepsis Day is an awareness day which aims to remind people of the detrimental impact sepsis can have as sepsis is one the top causes of preventable deaths worldwide.

Sepsis is a global health crisis. It affects between 47 and 50 million people every year. Around 11 million people die as a result of sepsis which is approximately one death every 2.8 seconds. 20 per cent of all deaths worldwide are associated with sepsis and many surviving patients suffer from the consequences of sepsis for the rest of their lives.

Common sources of sepsis include:

  • Meningitis
  • Skin or soft tissue infection
  • Catheter-related infection
  • Urinary tract infection
  • Pneumonia
  • Bloodstream Infection
  • Abdominal infections such as appendicitis, infectious diarrhea, gallbladder infection

Pick your top 3 behaviours to help us live our values

 

Thank you to everyone who shared their ideas for behaviours to help us live our values.

We had so many great ideas, and now we need to find out which you think are the very best.

To get involved, click on the following link to see the most popular ideas and choose the three you like the best.

It will only take a couple of minutes and don’t worry, it’s all anonymous.

Responses portal will close at midnight on Sunday 11 September.

Chief Executive’s Message – Friday 2 September

 

Next week the Trust Board will receive our winter plan for discussion and approval. We know that the issues that traditionally challenged us only during the colder months are now very real all through the year and our teams have been doing all they can to deliver safe patient care in very difficult circumstances.

NHS England have set out eight core areas for systems to focus on to improve resilience this winter:

  • Prepare for COVID-19 variants and respiratory challenges – including flu / COVID-19 campaigns
  • Increase capacity outside acute trusts – such as scaling up primary care and mental health
  • Increase resilience in NHS 111 and 999
  • Target improved ambulance response times and reduce hospital handover delays
  • Reduce crowding in EDs and target the longest waiters
  • Reduce hospital occupancy – including schemes such as virtual wards
  • Ensure timely discharge
  • Provide better support for people at home

I am sure we would all agree that these priority areas for improvement seem the right things to focus on and our own winter plan reflects our contributions to these issues.

Our objectives for winter are to:

  • Reduce admissions – through the diversion of patients away from our emergency departments where other, more suitable services are available, and improve access to diagnosis and treatment on the same day
  • Reduce length of stay in a hospital bed – through more timely discharge and increased access to services in the community
  • Maintain our planned care services so that patient conditions do not deteriorate further, causing urgent care intervention

Many of the schemes that we are establishing are part of the new acute care model, which is the transformation of our services required ahead of our move to Midland Met. Some are already in place, such as our integrated discharge hub,  and they will effectively become business as usual as we embed this new model.

Our schemes have been developed collaboratively with colleagues from across our clinical groups.

  1. Enhance our Same Day Emergency Care (SDEC) function
  2. Expand the virtual ward capacity in the community with 140 beds in Sandwell and West Birmingham during November, continuing to increase over the winter months, with the right staffing in place to care for patients with more complex needs
  3. Open a new intermediate care facility, Harvest View, in Rowley Regis, in partnership with SMBC
  4. Deliver more services on an outpatient rather than inpatient basis such as our OPAT (outpatient parental antimocrobial therapy) service
  5. Integrated hub on our ED front doors to appropriately stream suitable patients out of hospitals
  6. Establish an urgent community response service for patients in the community who have had a fall
  7. Establish a seven day (8am to 6pm) Care Navigation Centre for all health and care practitioners (including the ambulance service) to use to better stream non-elective need/referrals

We are currently working with our system and place partners to ensure that our schemes join up with those being developed by partners, and to identify funding sources.

Delivering safe services for our patients this winter has to be all of our business. Even if you are not working in a front line service, you can play your part by ensuring your work is geared towards the delivery of safe patient care. Ensuring you have your flu and COVID-19 vaccination is an essential part of this and vaccinations will be available to all staff very soon!

Have a good weekend

Richard

Arches closure: 8 – 9 September

 

Arches retail unit at City Hospital will be offering a limited service from Thursday 8 September – Friday 9 September so essential maintenance works can be completed.

This means no hot food will be available during this time period. We apologise for any inconvenience this may cause.

← Older items Newer items →