Monthly archives: December 2023

Latest edition of Heartbeat now available!

The latest edition of Heartbeat is now available to read! This Christmas issue includes how Christmas came to SWB and how it was celebrated across the Trust by staff and patients, our winter ambition and annual apprentice awards ceremony.

Be sure to check out the December issue of Heartbeat by clicking here.

Industrial action until Saturday

As we embark on the third day of strike action by non-consultant doctors, we want to thank colleagues for their hard work and dedication in delivering safe and efficient care to our patients.

Industrial action will take place until tomorrow (Saturday 23 December), and it’s important that we continue to work together during this difficult period. Below are some things to improve the experiences of our patients.

Planning a hospital discharge early: It’s vital we plan ahead. The integrated discharge hub can support you with this from 8am – 8pm, seven days a week. You can contact them on ext. 3147.

Be sure to check out this short video below about planning discharges early and the top three tips for planning a discharge.

At every board round and safety huddle, please consider the following:

• What is keeping this person in hospital?
• Could they go home? Could that be today?
• Could their treatment be continued in the comfort of their own home?
• Are they waiting for investigations? Could these be done as an outpatient?
• Are they waiting on repeat blood tests? Could these be done in the community?

Please escalate within your clinical groups any issues that you cannot resolve locally, no matter how small they may seem.  Every small thing will make a difference to our patients.

Could your patient be admitted to our virtual ward?

If your patient has past the acute stage of their illness, but still needs a level of intervention to support their recovery, they might be able to be discharged into the care of our virtual ward – these are consultant led and allow patients to continue their recovery in the comfort of their own home, but with constant monitoring and medical input. If you are unsure about what a virtual ward is, please watch the short video below:

You can also contact the virtual ward on extension 2664 (option 4) to discuss your patient with them.

Extended opening hours of Costa outlets at City and Sandwell: We will be offering hot and cold food as well drinks during the extended opening hours at our Costa outlets. See times below.

Join our chaplaincy team throughout the festive period

Christians view the birth of Jesus Christ as the greatest gift and best expression of blessing to humanity. The Christmas blessing is a person and is given to the world. It also meant to reflect that to our lives as we share our various blessings to others, especially those who are in need. To joyfully celebrate, our chaplaincy team will be hosting a series of festive events throughout the Christmas period across sites as supported by different groups and churches in the community.

Sandwell:

• Monday 25 December, 9am: Christmas morning celebration and communion at Sandwell Chapel (second floor, main block)

 City: 

• Monday 25 December, 11am: Christmas morning celebration and communion at City Chapel (first floor, opposite D20) then followed by gift giving to nominated wards.

Colleagues are also most welcome to join us for the Carol Singing at the wards as we spread the blessings of Christmas!

 For more information the team can be reached at City on ext. 4055/5051 and at Sandwell on ext. 3552/3557.

Reminder: Neurophysiology’s IT upgrade

Neurophysiology’s IT system Prism has now been upgraded to Solus.  

Access to Prism.net the read only version of Prism has been disabled and there is now a new read only application called Solus Lite. Here users can view reports from the old Prism system and those recorded post go live in Solus. They can also view appointments to see attendances, cancelations and DNAs.  

The Solus Lite application can be found under clinical systems on Connect (see screenshot below) and is accessible to all Prism.net users with their Trust login not their Prism username. Please note respiratory physiology is still using Prism.net currently. 

Anyone that requires access to Solus Lite that didn’t have access to Prism.net should contact IT on ext. 4050 to be added to the user group. 

Note: Clinical reports ordered from Unity are currently uploaded as clinical documents to the day they were recorded at “00:00 hours”. This will change in phase two of the project whereby clinicians/referrers will get an alert to the result being available in Unity.  

Review of Non-Formulary Medicine Requests over the Christmas Period

The Formulary and Therapeutics Group (FTG) team will be reviewing urgent non-formulary requests over the Christmas period and request forms should continue to be filled in. However, there may be a delay in processing of routine requests over weekend and Bank Holiday periods. When initiating a new medicine please therefore make every effort to use a formulary option, to prevent delays in patients receiving treatment.

The local SWB formulary is contained within the BNF and can be found on Connect –  https://connect2.swbh.nhs.uk/bnf/ Formularies across the Black Country are currently being aligned, so there have been substantial changes with a number of drugs added to the formulary within the Gastro, Cardio, Respiratory, Infections and Endocrine chapters. It is therefore worth checking the BNF for updates to see whether a form is still required, to minimise unnecessary requests.

Please note that patients admitted on their own regular medication that is not on the formulary at SWB do not need a request form completed.

See below for advice on how to direct your queries for urgent non-formulary requests that cannot wait until regular working hours.

Drug safety notice: Potential for inappropriate dosing of insulin when switching insulin degludec products

A Medicine Supply Notification issued on 24 May 2023, detailed a shortage of Tresiba (insulin degludec) FlexTouch 100units/mL solution for injection 3ml pre-filled pens.

Some patients may have been switched to Tresiba® (insulin degludec) FlexTouch® 200units/mL solution for injection 3ml pre-filled pens.

A small number of patients have been incorrectly advised to administer half the number of units.

Please see Safety Notice – Inappropriate dosing of insulin degludec for further details.

For more information please contact the pharmacy department on ext. 5263/3783.

Allied Health Professional (AHP)- Research Led Training Tuesday 16 January 2024

Allied Health Professional (AHP)  is running led research training on Tuesday 16 January 2024, for the following working for one of these trusts:

• The Royal Wolverhampton NHS Trust
• The Dudley Group NHS Foundation Trust
• Dudley Integrated Health and Care Trust
• Sandwell and West Birmingham NHS Trust
• Walsall Healthcare NHS Trust
• Black Country Healthcare, NHS Foundation Trust

Click here to join the meeting.

For any queries, please do not hesitate to contact the Research ABC project team at:
rwh-tr.researchabcproject@nhs.net

Catering arrangements over the festive period

Colleagues working Christmas Day can access a free brunch from either Hallam Restaurant, Sandwell or Arches Cafe, City. There are no meal tickets required, please arrive at the dedicated area for your meal. Staff are required to bring your ID/name badge.

Opening times for catering facilities:

Patient arrangements:

Christmas Day meals: Orders for Christmas Day meals will be available to order from the menu iPad Friday 22 December, 2pm – Sunday 24 December, 11am (Christmas Eve).

Patients at Leasowes – Orders for Christmas day meals will be available to order from the menu iPad Friday 22 December, 2pm – Sunday 24 December, 8am ( Christmas Eve)

All other patient meal ordering times and days will remain the same, staff will need to be order these via menu iPads.

Ward issue deliveries: A double delivery will be supplied from Monday 18 December – Friday 22 December. Additional supplies are available week commencing Monday 25 December, on request.

Christmas Day menu for patients:

Breakfast service – a continental breakfast plus porridge / Ready Brek will be available.

Hot lunch service – normal patient menus including therapeutic diets will be offered. With the addition of traditional Christmas roast turkey, Christmas pudding and brandy sauce.

Cold supper service – soup, selection of sandwiches, jacket potatoes and cold desserts plus therapeutic diets will be available.

Patients will also receive additional snacks of Christmas cake slices, mince pies which will be delivered to all wards on Christmas Day.

Boxing Day and New Year’s Day – Patients will be offered the normal menu along with all other days over the festive period.

If you are unsure about any of these arrangements or would like to contact the catering team please call ext. 6374, 3463 or 4881.

Upgrade affecting the blood gas analysers: 9 January, 9am – 5pm

Please be aware an essential pathology IT software upgrade will be taking place on Tuesday 9 January affecting the Blood Gas Analysers and Liat Analysers. The work is being carried out by our support partner Black Country Pathology Services and is scheduled to begin at 9am for approximately 8 hours and should be completed at 5pm.

During this time Unity will continue to function as normal. 

The Blood Gas Analysers and Liat Analysers can work independently during the upgrade; however, from 9am to 5pm no results will be forwarded to Unity.  As these are point of care tests clinical staff will have had sight of the result on the point of care device at the time of analysis on the printout. We would recommend that clinical staff make a separate note of the Blood Gas and Liat results section within the documents section of the patient record. 

Whilst it’s possible to add these results manually via assessments and fluid balance/adult quick view/blood gas analysis, we recommend not to do this as it will create duplicate records when the data flows back after the upgrade is complete.

After the upgrade the results carried out during this time should transfer automatically to Unity.

The activity will be closely monitored by our support partner, point of care leads and IT support teams.

As always, should you have any further queries then please do contact the point of care team on ext. 5352.

Clinical support system maintenance: 6 January, 7am – 7.30am

An essential CSS (clinical support system) maintenance will be taking place on Monday 6 January to ensure the Trust’s system remains stable. The work is being carried out by IT and is scheduled to begin at 7am for approximately 30 minutes and should be completed by 7.30am.

During this time colleagues using CSS may experience brief disconnections and be forcibly logged off the system but will be able to log straight back in.

We would recommend colleagues try not to upload documents into CSS, access the ‘CDA’ icon in Unity to view historical patient records, or complete eOutcomes from the link in Unity between 6.55am and 7.05am. This timeslot has been chosen as a quieter time operationally to minimise impact.

The activity will be closely monitored by our IT support teams.

As always, should you have any further queries please do contact the IT Service Desk on ext. 4050 or 0121 507 4050 or via Chat with the IT Service Desk.