Monthly archives: November 2023
What is a Discharge Lounge?
What is a Discharge Lounge?
The discharge lounge plays a critical role in supporting good patient flow throughout the hospital, it means that we can free up an acute bed which is occupied by someone awaiting discharge, for someone that needs to be admitted from our emergency department. This gives more available beds in ED and reduces the length of time patients are waiting.
During our winter Ambition focus weeks, we will talking more about the importance of the discharge lounge, but first, watch this video of Staff Nurse, Vickie Ibukunoluwa explaining more about what the is discharge lounge is.
Are you interested in being a nursing associate apprentice?
The nursing associate team is looking for nursing associates to join their team as apprentices.
The requirements for the role are:
- Evidence of achieving the required numeracy and literacy standard functional skills level 2 Math’s and English or GCSE at C/4 or above.
- Confirmation of support from your line manager.
- Contracted to work a minimum of 30 hours per week.
- Six months healthcare experience
If you would like to apply for the role, please contact swbh.nursingassociates@nhs.net to complete an application form.
Application forms must be completed by Friday 1 December.
16 Days Action- Day 5 of Domestic Abuse awareness
There is a wealth of evidence to demonstrate the impact of Domestic Abuse (DA) on children. Children who witness or are affected by DA are considered victims in their own right by Law. Children’s responses to living with domestic abuse may vary according to age and stage of development. Unborn children will be impacted if their mother is experiencing DA during pregnancy.
Whether your role involves directly caring for children, or you care for adults, or you are a colleague/ line manager and you are aware of domestic abuse issues seek safeguarding children advice and follow safeguarding policy.
This video is from Barnardo’s Ireland and gives an account of children’s voices to show the importance of recognising Domestic Abuse. https://youtu.be/Zqo6vonh1Z8
For more information:
https://learning.nspcc.org.uk/child-abuse-and-neglect/domestic-abuse
For information on Safeguarding support within the organisation and links to services offering specialist advice, see Safeguarding Children on Connect.
Safeguarding numbers: Children:0121 507 2844, Adults: 0121 507 5174
MASH/DA: 0121 569 7223
IDVA: City 0121 507 4829, Sandwell 0121 507 3787
16 Days Of Action- Against Domestic Abuse 2023
To continue with awareness raising during the 16 Days of Action: Domestic Abuse as an Issue for Health Services.
Domestic Abuse can be physical, sexual, violent, threatening, controlling, coercive, economic, psychological and emotional.
Domestic Abuse can take place in intimate partner relationships- heterosexual, same sex and following separation, family relationships, child to parent abuse and multiple relatives where there is ‘honour-based’ abuse.
Abuse can be a single event or ongoing course of behaviour.
Children who see, hear or experience the effects of domestic abuse are defined as victims in law.
Whilst both men and women can be affected by domestic abuse, women are disproportionately the victims.
There are groups of people within the population who data has identified as being more vulnerable to DA:
•Pregnant women (for 30% of women who experience domestic abuse, the first event occurs during pregnancy)
•New mothers
•People age 55+
•Young people
•Disabled people (twice as many disabled women have experienced domestic abuse compared to non-disabled women)
•Where there are additional barriers to disclosing, reporting or accessing support (e.g. LGBTQ+ communities, women with no recourse to public funds, language barriers, cultural isolation)
•People with mental health disorder (women experiencing DA are three times more likely to have a mental health diagnosis)
•People with higher rate of drug and/or alcohol misuse
This means that anyone receiving care or employed by the Trust could be impacted by DA.
To access Domestic Abuse Training on ESR: 000Domestic Violence and abuse.
For information on Safeguarding support within the organisation and links to services offering specialist advice, see Safeguarding Children on Connect.
Safeguarding numbers: Children:0121 507 2844, Adults: 0121 507 5174
MASH: 0121 569 7223
IDVA: City 0121 507 4829, Sandwell 0121 507 3787
Drug Misuse Referrals
The Alcohol Care Team have a new full time Drug Specialist Nurse Katie. She will assess patients presenting with drug misuse issues in SWB emergency and inpatient departments.
To make a referral to the Drug Specialist Nurse:
Katie is available cross site, Monday – Friday 8am – 4pm and can be contacted on 07977 783 355, ext 5074 or bleep 5117 (Unity referrals coming soon).
Winter Ambition 2023
After weeks of sustained pressure, particularly on our emergency departments, resulting in a critical incident, Winter Ambition is concerned with making things better for you and better for our patients.
We will be starting with two action weeks, one at City Hospital (w/c 27 November) and one at Sandwell Hospital (w/c 4 December) The action weeks will see dedicated teams of people, including the executive team, focused on resolving any issues as quickly as possible, to maintain excellent patient flow throughout the hospital.
You won’t need to do anything differently during the week, but it should feel more focussed with regular updates on how we are performing.
Be sure to watch a video from Group Director of Operations for Medicine and Emergency Care, Dave Byrne and Group Director of Nursing, Deb Fretwell explaining more about Winter Ambition.
Weeks of working under sustained pressure have an impact on both staff morale and patient experience, we can, and we must do better.
Currently:
- 37% of our ambulances aren’t offloaded within 30 minutes
- 70% of patients have seen a doctor after an hour of arriving at ED
- 376 minutes is the average amount of time someone spends in ED
- 56% of our patients are discharged after 5pm
Some of the things we will be looking at during the focus weeks are:
- Adherence to rhythm of the day
- Number of patients to the discharge lounge before 8am (aim 2)
- Number of patients to the discharge lounge before 10am (aim 10)
- Number of potential discharges remaining at 4pm (aim zero)
- Total number of discharges per day
- TTOs timings
It’s not just about having these weeks and then going back to our usual ways of working – it’s about taking learning and implementing it into our business as usual and we want your feedback about what works and what doesn’t. Please do speak to your leadership teams, or if you prefer to feedback anonymously, you can do so here: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/Winterambition
Reduced issues of the bulletin over the next two weeks
One aspect of the Winter Ambition focus weeks, that is currently taking place at City Hospital and will be at Sandwell hospital next week, is aiming for a reduction in non-essential e-mails.
For this reason, we will be reducing the number of communications bulletins that we send during the next two weeks, from five to three. They will be issued on a Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
Please continue to check the news items on Connect and you if you haven’t already, you can keep up to date by joining our staff only Facebook Group – Our SWB Family – it’s quick and easy to join simply click the link or scan the QR code below answer a couple of questions and then you’ll be approved by a member of the communications team.
Essential Unity Printing maintenance: Today from 10:30pm to Tuesday 28 November at 12.30am
Please be aware essential Unity maintenance will be taking place on today to ensure the supporting infrastructure remains secure and security compliant. The work is scheduled to begin at 10.30pm for approximately two hours and should be completed by 12.30am on Tuesday 28 November.
During this time Unity will remain fully available; however, from 10:30pm on today until around midnight Unity printing will be unavailable for up to 1.5 hours at the following community site locations:
Rowley Regis Hospital – McCarthy Ward, Westwood Ward, Phlebotomy, Pharmacy, Outpatients, Henderson, Archer Ward, Day Unit
Aston Pride – Midwifery
Lyng – Sexual Health, Phlebotomy, Heart Failure Nurses
Victoria Health Centre – Phlebotomy
Leasowes – all areas
Soho Health Centre – Phlebotomy
Tower Hill Medical Practice – Phlebotomy
Summerfield Primary Care Centre – Phlebotomy
Attwood Green Health Centre – Outpatients
Neptune Health Park – Outpatients, Phlebotomy
Oldbury Health Centre – Phlebotomy
o This will affect specimen label, requisition and pharmacy printing.
o Any print jobs submitted during this time will be held and printed once the print servers come back online.
If clinical staff are due to collect a sample between these time above, we would advise them to wait until specimen labelling functionality returns. If staff have a very urgent specimen to collect that cannot wait to collect and send to pathology, then a manual pathology request form will need to be completed and sent with the sample. It is envisaged that this requirement will be extremely rare and unlikely at those times.
The activity will be closely monitored by our IT support teams.
As always, should you have any further queries then please do contact the IT Service Desk on ext. 4050 or 0121 507 4050 or via Chat with the IT Service Desk
ICE System upgrade: 29 November, 8am to 2pm
Please be aware an essential ICE system upgrade will be taking place on Wednesday 29 November by our Pathology support partner BCPS to ensure the supporting infrastructure remains secure and security compliant. The work is scheduled to begin at 8am and should be completed by 5pm on Wednesday 29 November.
For up to four hours from 8am – 2pm on Wednesday 29 November the ICE system will be unavailable. This will affect SWBH users/services that use ICE for e-requesting or viewing reports.
- Consideration to be made by clinicians to only order urgent blood tests and diagnostic imaging whilst the system is unavailable.
- GPs and Birmingham Solihull mental health will still be able to view reports in EMIS/Systm1 or their results viewer.
- Phlebotomy will need to print forms out in advance as they print the ICE forms when the patient turns up for S1 practices.
Results
- Pathology – these will continue to be sent to GP systems as normal as they are sent from Wolverhampton.
- Radiology – these will not be sent to GP Systems during downtime. They will be queued and sent when ICE is back up. Any urgent findings will be emailed to the GPs in the usual way.
Orders
- Pathology – please use manual forms for tests that need to be done during the downtime, wherever possible, please prepare requests via ICE before the downtime starts or postpone order until request can be added when system is back up.
- Radiology – for routine referrals, please prepare requests via ICE before the downtime starts or postpone the order until request can be added when system is back up. For urgent requests, please use manual forms and email these to swbh.TeamImagingBookings@nhs.net.
The activity will be closely monitored by BCPS and the Black Country Comms team will include this upgrade in their weekly brief to GPs. As always, should you have any further queries then please contact:
Radiology Contacts
For radiology queries, please contact radiology reception on
City Main X-Ray: 0121 507 5179
Sandwell Main X-Ray: 0121 507 3339
Rowley X-Ray: 0121 507 6324
Pathology Contacts
- For pathology queries, please contact pathology IT on 0121 507 6600
- Email – SWBH.Pathology-IT@nhs.net
For any general queries, please contact SWBH Pathology IT on SWBH.Pathology-IT@nhs.net
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