Monthly archives: April 2024

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

Essential clinical support system (CSS) maintenance will be taking place on Monday 6 May 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.

Chief Executive’s Message – Friday 26 April

Dear colleagues,

Earlier this week, we held our annual leader’s conference, where quite rightly, the topic of conversation was Midland Met and how we will deliver a successful first year. It was fantastic to have so many of our senior leaders in one room, focussed on the biggest thing in this Trust’s journey to date. In his welcome speech, Dr Anderson, our Chief Medical Officer, asked for a show of hands as to who had never opened a new hospital before – almost everyone, other than some of our partners from the New Hospitals Programme and our move partners Healthcare Relocations, raised their hands. This is new for us all, a once in a career opportunity to be involved in a project of this scale, and one that we can all look back on at the end of our careers, knowing that we left something behind, that will benefit the people of Sandwell and West Birmingham for many years ahead.

I think the most popular phrase I heard from colleagues was ‘it feels so much more real now’ and that’s so true. This project has been going on for 17 years, and for the first time, we are able to announce the dates when we will be moving our patients into Midland Met. For those of you who were on TeamTalk on Wednesday, you would have heard our Managing Director for the Midland Met Programme Company, Rachel Barlow, talk about this, but if you missed it, the key dates you need to know are below.

That’s just 163 days until the first patient arrives through the doors of Midland Met – now, if that doesn’t make it feel more real, I am not sure what will. I know it’s incredibly busy, and lots is being asked of you all, but please continue to deliver those key things needed in order for us to successfully open Midland Met.

To quote a Billy Ocean song, ‘when the going gets tough, the tough get going,’ and this organisation is full of tough people. Focus on what I have said above – each and everyone of you is delivering a lasting legacy to our population – and I know for sure that I will look back on it with pride in years to come, and so should all of you.

Finally, we have just a few days until the Q1 pulse survey closes – and our response rate is currently at 34 per cent, so we have a little bit of work to do as we go in search of our target of 45 per cent.

If you haven’t yet completed your survey, please do take five minutes to complete it. You can access it via the link below – and you simply need to input your e-mail address to get access.

This is simply to authenticate you as a member of staff – it does not identify your answers.

Have a good weekend.

Richard

Aligning IT services for the opening of Midland Met

Did you know that as a trust we have over 180 different IT systems?  A complex but often unseen element of moving to Midland Met is the work being undertaken to align all the Trust IT systems to the new hospital layout and site.

The reconfiguration of Unity and IPM is almost complete, and now we need to coordinate the updating of all other systems which detail our sites by location (ie,MMUH/CITY/SANDWELL/ROWLEY) or ward/department/bed.

A number of these systems feed directly from Unity and IPM (i.e., surginet, firstnet) however, many are locally owned and managed by individual departments (i.e., CRIS, Badgernet, Safeguard).

On Monday, 29 April 2024 all local system owners are invited to a workshop where the Informatics App Support team will talk through the Midland Met bed configuration changes on Unity and IPM and start a discussion about how this can feed into changes to local systems.

Where system owners are known, invites will be sent directly. If you have not received an invite and believe you should be a participant please email danielle.joseph@nhs.net or richard.shinn1@nhs.net.

Trade union drop in session Rowley: 1 May

The trade unions will be hosting a drop-in session on Wednesday 1 May from 10am – 3pm in the committee room at Rowley for staff to raise any concerns regarding the following topics:

• Patient safety
• Security
• Management of change

These sessions will be supported by a mental health lead nurse, Freedom to Speak Up and our security.

For more information please email simon.morley1@nhs.net.

Drug safety notice: Clarithromycin 500mg powder for reconstitution

There have been reports that some batches of Clarithromycin 500mg powder for reconstitution manufactured by Demo SA/Kent Pharma have been cloudy and crystallised upon reconstitution.

There has been no formal communication from the manufacturer, this is a precautionary notice.

The affected batches identified so far are:

• Batch no 2210596
• Batch no 2206920

Pharmacy department have received one or more of these batches.

For advice please see Clarithromycin 500mg powder for reconstitution (Demo SAKent Pharma)

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

Maintenance affecting Pathology: Thursday 2 May, 6am – 8am

Please be aware that an essential IT maintenance is taking place on Thursday 2 May from 6am to 8am by our external pathology vendor which will affect the pathology service at Sandwell and City.

During the maintenance, Unity will remain fully available; however, from 6am to 8am all pathology orders placed in Unity will queue for up to two hours until service is restored. Colleagues will need to revert to requesting all pathology requests on paper forms as well as on Unity during the maintenance.

As soon as the maintenance is complete, orders will be booked in electronically and reported through to message centre ready for endorsement. Colleagues can continue to make ICE requests during the downtime but there will be a delay receiving results. 

The laboratory will prioritise the most urgent requests from ED, ITU/CCS, AMU, Coronary Care and Paediatrics/Neonates during this period. Urgent results will continue to be phoned to the requestor during the downtime.

The activity will be closely monitored, and desk top alerts will be issued from 4am advising colleagues of the need to revert to BCP during the maintenance.

Should you have any further queries then please pathology on 0121 507 6600 or email on swbh.pathology-it@nhs.net.

Our new Speak Up portal is now available to colleagues

We have recently introduced our new Freedom to Speak Up portal.

The portal will allow you to raise concerns directly with the Freedom to Speak Up Guardian you wish to support you with your concern. This will strengthen our ability to identify key themes of concerns.

The most important aspect of you speaking up is the information you can provide and not your identity and your concerns will only ever be shared with your consent.

Be sure to check out this short video featuring Dan Conway, Associate Director of Corporate Governance talking about the portal.

You can check out portal by clicking here.

Are you a carer?

Come along to one of the carers support drop-in sessions. You can influence decisions about the service and help to improve carer’s lives.

The current dates of the sessions will be:

• Wednesday 24 April – 2pm – 3.30pm – Brasshouse Centre, Smethwick
• Tuesday 30 April – 12.30pm – 2.30pm – Cradley Heath Community Centre
• Thursday 2 May – 10.30am – 12pm – Sandwell Aquatics Centre
• Thursday 9 May – 10.30 – 12pm – Portway Lifestyle Centre
• Friday 10 May – 10am – 12pm – Jubilee Community Centre, Tipton

Fill in the survey here to give your experiences to help shape a new service, supporting younger carers in Sandwell.

Communication in Care training

The Nursing Associate Education team and our Patient Experience team are working in collaboration to deliver ‘ Communication in Care Training ‘ to all staff across the organisation.

This training will cover professional communication and teamwork.

The first session will be hosted face to face on Tuesday 18 June from 8 am to 12 pm.

To register your interest, please book on to the training via ESR.

If you require any more information, please contact Stacey Clarke

NEJM catalyst innovations in care delivery

Staff at SWB have recently had a large portion of their work from a collaboration published in the New England Journal of Medicine Catalyst subsidiary – with the publication focusing on internationally applicable innovation in healthcare practices.

Analysing data from the first five years of patient engagement from our Alcohol Care Team – it demonstrates the health, service delivery and efficiency benefits that an alcohol care team can provide when caring for those with acute alcohol related health problems.

You can read the full publication here.