Monthly archives: September 2023

West Midlands Maternal Medicine Network – Midwives Study Day Friday 3 November

The West Midlands Maternal Medicine Network are hosting a a midwives study day event on Friday 3 November at 9am – 4pm.

This will include a guest speaker and throughout the day the following subjects will be covered such as VTE/Haematology Update; AKI and Renal Case Studies; Asthma and Respiratory conditions during pregnancy.

This is a FREE study day for Midwives from across the Midlands building on the Maternal Medicine Network 1st Study Day which was held in March 2023. The event will take place at the IBIS Hotel, New Street, Birmingham and is free to attend. Please register your interest, using your NHS email address, and reserve your place as early as possible as numbers are strictly limited.

Lunch and refreshments will be provided throughout the day. Please inform us of any dietary requirements.

To reserve a spot click this link

For more information contact carole.edwards9@nhs.net

Sad passing of Lisa Parsons: Funeral details

Former colleague, Lisa Parsons, has sadly passed away. Lisa retired in January 2023 she was well known and respected across the organisation.

Lisa worked as a Senior Ward Service officer at Sandwell and she worked for the Trust for 33 years. She was a very popular and extremely well like member of the ward service team. She will be missed by everyone at SWB, especially her fellow ward service officer colleagues.

Funeral details: The funeral will be taking place Monday 25 September, 10am at Sandwell Crematorium. Newton Road, Forge Lane, West Bromwich, B71 3SX.

Places still available for Your Trust Charity marathon challenges at Alton Towers

Come and join Your Trust Charity at the UK’s biggest theme park, Alton Towers for an exciting event around the park, to raise funds for the charity.

Saturday 11 November and Sunday 12 November is the date for the 5k, 10k and half marathon challenges and there are still places available. If you wish to take part you need to book by Thursday 19 October.

Your Trust Charity invites you to raise a suggested target of £50 per person (or £200 for a team of four) and will support you to set up your own free JustGiving page. Each participant will need to pay a nominal registration fee to the event organiser which includes entry into the theme park with free ride access after the race.

Please click here the link for more information on how to book your place.

Meagan Fernandes wins Deputy Director of the Year accolade

Meagan Fernandes has scooped the Deputy Director of the Year accolade in the HPMA (Healthcare People Management Association) Excellence in People Awards.

She was praised for her work in delivering the Trust’s People Plan which focuses on the role that leaders should play in ensuring staff flourish and thrive at the organisation and increasing access to education and employment opportunities for the local communities surrounding the area.

Meagan said: “It’s a real honour to receive this recognition from one of the leading organisations in the industry. The Trust has been working hard to introduce a meaningful plan which improves the experiences of our staff and delivers enhanced outcomes for our patients and communities.

“Through this we have introduced our values which are ambition, respect and compassion, a leadership programme that helps embed this further and a comprehensive education and employability programme with local partners. These initiatives increase opportunities for our communities to thrive and meet our regeneration commitments linked to the Midland Metropolitan University Hospital opening next year and the Learning Campus which will be based at the new hospital site. They are a reflection of what is best about us and what matters most to us, the people we care for and the wider community we serve.

“The behaviour of our staff has a positive impact on the experiences of our patients and I’m pleased to be driving this forward with the team I work with.”

During the ceremony, Meagan was described as a “values driven and authentic leader who was relentless in the pursuit of success”.

The HPMA Awards event was held in Leeds during a two-day conference. Established nearly 50 years ago, the body boasts more than 5,000 members ranging from HR directors and deputy directors from across healthcare. It aims to support and develop the profession to improve the management of people leading to better patient care.

The Great Genome – how to make it work in Paediatrics

Central and South Genomic Medicine Service Alliance are holding a face-to-face training session called The Great Genome – how to make it work in Paediatrics on Tuesday, 20 February 2024. The aim of this event is to support NHS staff to help embed genomics into mainstream care.

This event is aimed at Clinicians working in Community Paediatricians, Paediatricians, and Paediatric Neurology (Consultant, Training Grades, Nurses, and Allied Health Professionals who request genetic testing or are involved in the care of children who are having genetic testing or who have a genetic condition)

The event is free, and is worth 4 CPD points. If you would like to register, please click here.

Chief Executive’s Message – Friday 22 September

Last week the Board had the usual packed agenda discussing the breadth of the Trust’s programme of work. In this message, I’d like to highlight, two points of discussion – prioritising the way we work and ensuring we have the right processes in place to support colleagues when they raise concerns.

Our organisation is currently facing multiple demands that are amplified due to the scale and depth of the Midland Met programme of work. These challenges are being met by the same small group of leaders in clinical and operational roles – to redesign services, handle the management of change programme as well as deliver elective and urgent care recovery plus handling industrial action.

During August I met every executive team member and the leadership teams of all five of our clinical groups and set out the priorities I would be holding them account to in addition to the business-as-usual expectations.

The three priorities are:

1. Deliver the MMUH programme workstream requirements to secure service transformation, service quality/safety, workforce engagement and preparedness and deliver the early stages of the strong MMUH benefits case.
2. Deliver our financial recovery plan, to assure the public we are managing public money wisely and do not materially harm our or our host system’s ability to secure additional revenue or capital funding for longer term investment in our IT, our estate, or our workforce, by virtue of being in significant deficit.
3. Deliver improved workforce optimisation through a clear recruitment plan, improved attendance management and agency/locum discipline, thereby enabling better safety and continuity of care in our services and ensuring we have the right ground conditions in place on which to “land” the MMUH next year.

It is these three priorities which we now need to assess our 14 annual plan objectives against. The Board was in support of this and now each subcommittee will assess their own oversight of our annual plan objectives against those three filters.

Following the Lucy Letby verdict, our focus is now heavily on strengthening our freedom to speak up service and ensuring it’s effective. We’re already well underway with making sure we expand the freedom to speak up arrangements in the organisation as well as ensuring that it is a listening service and a hearing service and that it’s well embedded. You may already have seen our interim freedom to speak up lead, Jamil Johnson out and about raising awareness.

I’m pleased to report we now have 14 freedom to speak up guardians (representing a wide spectrum of professions across SWB), which is the most we’ve ever had in the organisation. And we will have 21 when we have onboarded everyone who has expressed an interest.

We want you to feel safe to raise any issues of concern. Connect has more information on the guardians and how they can support you.

This week, along with other senior colleagues, I have been overseeing our continued collective response to the consultants and non-consultant doctors’ industrial action.  I have been impressed again by the relatively calm and professional approach everyone has taken to dealing with the unprecedented nature of this week.  It is causing untold disruption to patients.  It is harming staff morale.  It is harming the reputation of the NHS with the wider public, at a time when such a knock in confidence can be ill-afforded.  All I wanted to say was a heartfelt thank you to all those who have contributed to making this week as harm-free and as smooth as it mainly has been.  I won’t forget your contributions.

Have a good week.

Getting started in research: making it happen- Tuesday 17 October 2023

As part of a recent award from Research England to enhance Research Culture, Birmingham Health Partners are happy to announce an upcoming series of workshops geared towards making routes into academia and clinical research more transparent. The first of these sessions will be focused on research career pathways for clinicians, but subsequent events will be tailored towards Nurses, Midwives and Allied Health Professionals.

Medical and Dental clinicians with an interest in exploring how to get started in research, are invited to an exciting free event on Tuesday 17 October, 9.30am-1pm featuring talks from some senior leaders from across the Birmingham Health Partners group.

Topics include:

• Clinical research career pathways
• Funding landscape overview
• Perspectives from early career researchers at different career stages
• A networking lunch

To register for this event please visit: https://forms.microsoft.com/e/qHUPV65MQj

To find out more click here 

Would you like to be a menopause champion?

As part of the Nursing and Midwifery retention plan, the trust has secured some funded training on being a ‘ Menopause Champion in the workplace’.

The two-hour online training session will be held on 15 November 10:30 am – 12:30pm.

This role is about providing support to Trust colleagues and managers around menopause and signposting them to support or resources. It’s about being a compassionate listening ear to those who are struggling with this change in their life.

As a menopause champion, you would be working as part of the Women’s network, supporting events and Menopause Cafe’s. Your contribution or experience can help support colleagues in the trust who don’t know who to turn to, or what to know more about how they can support a member of their team.

If you are interested, please contact Amber Markham by 20 October to secure a place.

BHP Lecture-Professor Mary Dixon-Woods- Thursday 9 November

“Why we need an evidence-base for improving quality and safety of care, and how we can build it”

BHP will be joined by Professor Mary Dixon-Woods, Director of THIS Institute and The Health Foundation Professor of Healthcare Improvement Studies in the Department of Public Health and Primary Care at the University of Cambridge. This lecture will briefly outline challenges in quality and safety in healthcare, will identify the patchy history of attempts to make improvements, will emphasise the need to build and evidence base for improvement, and will outline some of the challenges and opportunities in evidence generation.

Date: Thursday 9 November

Time: 4pm-6pm

Location: Edgbaston Park Hotel, Edgbaston Park Road, B15 2RS

Open to all but registration essential at: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/bhp-lecture-series-professor-mary-dixon-woods-tickets-671415681377

National Inclusion Week launch webinar – Monday 25 September

Welcome to National Inclusion Week 2023: We are so glad to have you joining us to celebrate this with a launch webinar on Monday 25 September at 10am – 11.30am.

The theme this year, Take Action Make Impact, centres around the idea that we are all trying to reach effective, positive and sustainable impact through inclusion action for all those we work with and for ourselves.

That is the ultimate aim of inclusion and diversity and why it’s so important to continue striving for truly inclusive workplaces – to create equity and equality impact for all.

Join us to kick off your National Inclusion Week, discuss Take Action Make Impact and hear from a range of panel lists on what Take Action Make Impact means to them and how we can embed impact into our day-to-day inclusion practices.

Book your place

You will need to register here for free and then return to this page to book a free place at this webinar.

We hope to see you then!