Monthly archives: April 2023
Resuscitation training available tomorrow
The Deteriorating Patient and Resuscitation Team is offering colleagues the opportunity to take part in resuscitation training tomorrow (5 April).
The training will be held tomorrow (Wednesday 5 April) from 8am on D43 in Sheldon block, and will take approximately two hours.
To book your place contact the team by calling extension 5908 or email swbh.resuscitationtraining@nhs.net.
National network outage affecting access to online services
There is currently a nationwide internet connectivity issue affecting a broad range of internet service providers. Unfortunately, this issue is expected to cause intermittent disruptions to online services throughout the day.
Engineers are currently working to address the problem, and we hope to have it resolved soon however we are expecting services to be intermittently available until the issue is fully resolved.
Please be aware that the following applications have been impacted: Abbott, Badgernet, iPM, RMS, PACS, Secure Pulse – VPN – Remote Access, External VPN Sites, EMS, MS Teams, and 8×8.
We understand that this may cause some inconvenience, and we appreciate your patience and understanding during this time. We are doing everything we can to address the issue as quickly as possible and will keep you updated on any developments.
Latest edition of Heartbeat now available!
This month, we’re focusing on our people. You can read all about our people plan, which launches in April, on pages 14–16. We’ve outlined methods through which you can raise a concern at work, and explained why we’re launching the plan and what it means for you.
We’re also celebrating all that our people do and achieve, including Christina Ronayne winning the 2022 Shiela Lorimer award. You can read about Governance Support Admin Officer Moeen’s recent humanitarian trip to Turkey on page five, and learn more about Ramadan from Muslim chaplain Erum on page six.
If you’re looking to expand your role in the Trust, you can read about two opportunities on page 21 – for our Freedom to Speak Up Guardians, and the Promoting Independence Lead Therapist.
Click here to read the latest edition of Heartbeat.
Happy reading!
Chief Executive’s Message – Friday 31 March
We have been informed that we must prepare for a further, continuous four days of strike action by non-consultant grade doctors, starting on Tuesday 11 April.
It goes without saying that all of us, including doctors in training who are in dispute with the government regarding pay and conditions, hoped beyond hope, that this situation could have been avoided. This forthcoming strike action will impact on services in a far more harmful way than the previous period of action. The reasons for this are numerous:
- There will be four days of strike action, not three.
- The action is taking place after a long bank holiday weekend and will be followed by a further weekend, during which acute hospital services always “gum up” because our acute services do not yet run adequately, across seven days yet. (They will in the MMUH care model, by the way).
- We will have a significant number of senior medical staff, senior clinical staff and leaders off on leave in what will be the second week of school Easter holidays.
- The chances of getting the same amount of discretionary effort from senior staff to cover night shifts, as we did last time, will be reduced. Colleagues are exhausted, frustrated and under no obligation to provide said cover.
- We have two emergency departments to run safely, with no option to close one or both of them.
On Friday afternoon, the executive team are meeting to establish a “critical incident” type command and control approach to manage the week in the run up to the strike, the bank holiday weekend and the first two “working” days after the strike. We are considering a range of action, but some decisions have already been made about pay rates for medical staff, cancellation of all corporate and non-urgent clinical forums and the prospective cancellation of outpatient and elective activity.
I am under no illusions here. This is going to test our ability to provide safe emergency and urgent care, to the very limit. We all need to hope and indeed pray, that common sense will prevail and both parties negotiate a pay and conditions deal which allows us all to get back to doing what we are good at – namely providing the full range of acute and community services to our deprived and deserving population.
Have a good weekend.
Communications Update: Unity Access Issues Resolved
We have been experiencing issues with Unity this morning. These have now been resolved and Unity is fully functional again.
Please ensure you document any changes, actions, results or medication administrations or changes back into Unity that occurred during the downtime period.
The instructions for this are in the RECOVERY section of the Trust Unity BCP available on Connect and by clicking here.
If you have any questions or concerns, please raise these with your nurse or manager in charge and via the capacity office.
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