Monthly archives: September 2023

Star Awards 2023: Sustainability Award – meet the nominees!

The Sustainability Award recognises an individual or team that has made simple changes to demonstrate their commitment to good environmental, social and ethical practices to reduce our environmental impact. They will have made changes within their area of work and how they work. This could include ensuring we work with partners and suppliers that share the SWB ethos of sustainability. Even small changes can make a big impact. 

This year’s nominees are:

• Mat Macdonald, Connor Brown, Amanda Jansen Van Vuuren and Darshana Dhaka
• Clare Nash
• Cardiac Cath Lab

Be sure to check out this short video featuring the nominees in this category to find out more!

Star Awards 2023: Distinguished Service Award – meet the nominees!

The Distinguished Service Award recoginses an individual or team who has worked above and beyond the call of duty in their service to the Trust. This could be a current employee or someone who has left during the previous year.

This year’s nominees are:

• Brigit Pennington-Wilson
• Verna White
• Ruth Francis

Be sure to check out this short video featuring the nominees in this category to find out more!

Celebrating our sisters: Supporting and sustaining black women in health and care research – 16 October

The NIHR infrastructures across the Midlands are joining forces to celebrate the contributions of Black women in health and care research.

Join a thought-provoking webinar and listening event aimed at showcasing, and learning from, Black excellence in health and care research. NIHR centres have jointly put together a stellar line up of speakers from health and care research infrastructures across the Midlands and beyond. After hearing about the work and experiences of Black women in research, there will be time to reflect and discuss on what our institutions can do to best support and sustain them going forward.

This virtual event will take place on Monday 16 October 2023 from 12pm – 2pm click this link. to Register.

Dump the junk!

It’s that time of the year when we ask everyone to have a look at their wards, clinics and departments and take the opportunity to dump their junk and clear their clutter – all with the help and support of the Trust’s decommissioning team.

Instead of pushing broken equipment out into the corridor or tucking it under the desk to gather dust, work with the decommissioning team when they come to your area to get it all cleared away.

The team will be out in force cross site from September through to April, simply check the schedule to see when they’ll be coming to you and get ready for a clear up of broken, unwanted and surplus equipment.

Guidance:

1. Confidential waste – If you have confidential waste in excess of your normal collection amount, contact Theresa Hickey in Supplies for additional bags. These will be collected on your dump the junk day.
2. Medical equipment – Broken and surplus medical equipment. Please contact EMBE on 4070 option 3. They will arrange to collect it from your area. (This can be arranged at any point)
3. IT equipment – Surplus or broken IT equipment can be put out on your dump the junk day and it will be removed.
4. Medical gases – Please contact the portering services on your designated site. (This can be arranged at any point)
5. Clinical consumables – Out of date stores consumables., should be placed into a stores cage and will be removed on your dump the junk day.
6. Junk – Items of furniture, small electrical items e.g., toasters, surplus items, etc. This will be collected on the designated dump the junk day.

Please do not put things out before the scheduled dates or after. If you need something moving prior/after to your date, please contact ext. 4128.

Chief Executive’s Message – Friday 29 September

One of the many responsibilities of being a Chief Executive is giving Churchillian addresses (!) to teams in the organisation on a variety of subjects. This week I addressed hugely important away day session hosted by the Midland Met programme company team and attended by clinical group leaders from across our organisation. The subject matter of the session was preparing for and delivering success in the MMUH care model and socialising the detailed and well thought through operational readiness process for our new hospital. All this of course is through the lens of it now being around one year before our new hospital receives its first patients. If ever there was a moment to reflect on the immediacy of the conclusion of the programme and to begin to conclude our work on service redesign and staff engagement, then this was it.

My address to the team reminded colleagues of the context in which we are working at present. Industrial unrest, urgent care pressures, financial pressures, enhanced regulatory expectation, and working in a health and care system in which the lines of accountability are far less clear than they once were, add to the collective challenge that the NHS faces at present. In that a maelstrom of issues, the job of the chief executive and other leaders and the organisation is to give our colleagues hope for the future. That is no easy task for most NHS leaders at the moment. However, my speech reminded our clinical teams at the away day, that Sandwell & West Birmingham NHS Trust is better placed than many to not just provide that hope to our frontline staff but also to deliver meaningful change. The reason why we are uniquely placed is because there is no other organisation in the NHS at present, that is going to benefit from such a transformation of service and workforce, as we will, through the Midland Met. We simply must, despite the unrelenting pressure of doing our transformation work for the Midland Met at the same time as handling the pressures I described above, grab this once in a generation opportunity with both hands.

I know that I have set this out many times before, but it does not harm to rehearse them again. The Midland Met care model, both in terms of our community services and our acute hospital services, should transform patient outcomes, staff experience our population health in the longer term. This is because:

• For patients, we must make the service transformations that are required to deliver the lower bed occupancy and improved clinical resilience the Midland Met should provide. As a result, care delivered as close to home as possible with a more responsive acute hospital intervention if required, will significantly change what our patients experience and get from us. Moreover, the radical change to the clinical environment of much of our acute hospital estate will bring benefits to our patients as well.
• For our staff, we are investing in team development, inclusive leadership and in recruitment. The Midland Met provides us with the ultimate lever for change in all three of these areas. If we do not make change in this space, then we run the risk of just cutting and pasting our current staff experience into that beautiful new building or into our redesigned community pathways and that would be a huge missed opportunity.
• For our local population, the “home first” care model and the focus on improved long term condition management, should make changes to the declining healthy life expectancy of people in Sandwell, Ladywood and Perry Barr.  Moreover, the catalyst factor that the Midland Met provides for a deprived part of the borough, we are confident will bring both economic unemployment benefits to the local population. We must strive to achieve the aim of healthier people and healthier places.

Our new hospital is almost a reality.  Let us not miss this opportunity to provide hope for the future and deliver real change for our patients, our people, and our population.

Yesterday I joined colleagues in the Courtyard Gardens at Sandwell Hospital to celebrate National Inclusion Week – dedicated to celebrating inclusion and taking action to create inclusive workplaces. I am proud to lead an organisation where we are always striving to become a more inclusive workplace. Inclusion is critical to our workplace, and we must all work together to make equal and diverse spaces everywhere we go. This does not mean you have to know everything, but understanding what inclusivity means is a good place to start.

And there is an opportunity for you to have your say on inclusion in our workplace and other matters in the upcoming national staff survey which launches on Monday and will be open for two months. For the first time this year our active bank only staff will also be given the opportunity to have their say.

Please do take the time to give your feedback when you receive the survey. Our people plan was developed to support you to have a great experience at work and the staff survey responses play a central role in that

Have a good week.

Richard

This week is ICON Week

The third annual ICON week is here to raise awareness of infant crying and how to cope to support parents/carers and prevent serious injury, illness and even death of young babies as a result of Abusive Head Trauma that happens when someone shakes a baby.

ICON stands for:

• Infant crying is normal
• Comfort methods can help
• It’s okay to walk away
• Never, ever shake a baby

ICON is a programme adopted by health and social care organisations in the UK to provide information about infant crying, including how to cope, support parents/carers, and reduce stress.

This year’s ICON Week is once again focusing on sharing ideas and best practices.  Many webinars are taking place throughout the week and are open to everyone.  For more information and joining instructions, please click here.

National Inclusion Week 2023

Founded by Inclusive Employers, National Inclusion Week is a week dedicated to celebrating inclusion and taking action to create inclusive workplaces.

Inclusion is critical to the workplace, and we must all work together to make equal and diverse spaces everywhere we go. This does not mean you have to know everything, but understanding what inclusivity means is a good place to start.

Here at SWB, we are always striving to become a more inclusive workplace as this means we are much more likely to see greater diversity at our Trust, fair treatment of everyone and greater equality of opportunities.

Be sure to check out this short video featuring Chris Rickards talking about the wellbeing offer which is open to all our colleagues.

EDI Quiz: The EDI Quiz closes on Sunday 1 October. Be sure to complete it to be in with a chance of winning a special prize! To complete the quiz please click here and email it to  swbh.swbedi@nhs.net.

Star Awards 2023: Learner of the Year – meet the nominees!

The Learner of the Year Award recognises an individual who can demonstrate the impact training has had on themselves, their team and their service. This is open to all staff and could include, for example, completing an apprenticeship, a computer course or a post grad/leadership programme or university module. 

This year’s nominees are:

• Lisa Williams
• David Cartwright
• Emma Hibbs

Be sure to check out this short video featuring the nominees in this category to find out more!

Safer spaces to have conversations – spaces still available

On Wednesday 4 October from 2pm – 4pm we will be launching the Human Library to support our commitment to creating safe spaces for staff to have conversations about issues in relation to prejudice going beyond the nine protected characteristics.

The human library experience is a rare opportunity in today’s diverse world to discover the differences of others without fear of judgment, to travel the world via Zoom, and to encounter learning opportunities through conversation and dialogue.

The human library publish people as open books on varied topics describing life experiences from beliefs to diagnoses, family relations to gender, social status to identity, disability to surviving tragedy or trauma.

Within breakout group reading rooms, you can engage via curious yet courteous questioning and have courageous conversations with cultures and experiences other than your own without the risk of offense being taken or your language and knowledge needing to be perfect.

Below are some links to videos and articles that provide more information about the Human Library:

1.     This library lets you borrow people instead of books. It just may help bridge our bitter divisions – a CNN article

2.     https://www.foxla.com/video/1088353 – Fox TV Good Day LA

3.     https://www.weforum.org/videos/how-human-books-can-tackle-societal-prejudice – World Economic Forum video

4.     https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p09v5z2g – BBC World Service

5.     At this library you check out a human not a book — and Sit Down to Talk | KQED – freelance journalist Clare Wiley

6.     The Human Library is tackling diversity and inclusion one person at a time – Forbes

If you are interested in being a reader please contact Library Services via email: swbh.library@nhs.net or call ext. 3587 to book a place . Places are limited and there is already a lot of demand and therefore we encourage you to book on asap to ensure you can participate in this event.

New mentorship training guide added to National Breast Imaging Academy programme

The National Breast Imaging Academy (NBIA) elearning programme now includes a new training guide to boost mentorship of mammography trainees.

The session provides mammography mentors with the tools to support their mentees and encourage them to develop effective learning strategies for success. It will train mentors on how to use coaching exercises with their mentees and to understand the self-coaching their mentees will be undertaking.

Mammography Mentors: A Practical Guide aims to maximise the quality of support provided while recognising the challenges, time constraints and changing digital landscape that mammographers face while being mentors.

This latest resource complements more than 150 resources within the programme which cover topics including mammographic interpretation and interventional skills, breast surgery, risk and prevention. For more information and to access the programme, please visit the National Breast Imaging Academy (NBIA) programme page.

Please also look out for our posts on Twitter @NHSE_TEL and help us to share the message where you can.You can also read more about our latest programmes by emailing edtechcomms@hee.nhs.uk to receive our monthly newsletter, TEL News.