Monthly archives: April 2024

New medicine management training module now available

The medicines management mandatory training has now changed for all nurses and midwives.

The new module focuses on:

• Professionalism and accountability
• Administration
• Safe and secure handling of medicines
• Management of controlled drugs.

Colleagues will be required to complete two assessments:

• Calculations – requires 100 per cent mark to pass.
• Medicines management – requires a 90 per cent mark to pass.

This training can be found on the Centric Cortex and must be completed in one single session, which will approximately take 40 – 60 minutes to complete.

To see more information about the training click here.

Steps on how to access the training can be found here. 

If two attempts are unsuccessful, do not complete a 3rd attempt until you have spoken with your line manager and reviewed the course material.

Drug safety notice: Hyoscine hydrobromide patches

There have been a small number of reports of serious and life-threatening anticholinergic side
effects associated with hyoscine hydrobromide patches, particularly when used outside the
licence. Healthcare professionals, patients, parents, and carers should be aware of the signs
and symptoms of serious side effects and the need to seek medical help if they occur.

For advice and solutions please see Safety Notice – Hypscine ButylBromide 1.5mg (Scopoderm) Patches

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

Chief Executive’s Message – Friday 5 April

Dear colleagues,

Happy new financial year! – one which promises to be the most exciting in the history of SWB – the year we will open the doors to our brand-new acute hospital – Midland Metropolitan University Hospital.

Midland Met is a wonderful building, but it is nothing with passionate and dedicated people, who are committed to delivering outstanding care to the people of Sandwell and West Birmingham – and we have those in abundance within our organisation.

So, it is vitally important that we make sure that SWB is the best place it can be for you to work.

We recently informed you of our People Plan objectives for 2024/25 – based on your feedback in the staff survey – and I wanted to now let you know what the next steps are in our staff engagement and experience improvement journey.

People Engagement Teams – PETs
In March, we held an event to officially launch our People Engagement Teams. These are groups of colleagues, from different roles, backgrounds, and bands, who will come together to drive forward improvements for people within their area.

Each clinical group and corporate directorate will have People Engagement Team and they will be supported by our improvement, organisation development and our comms team.

I am excited to see how these teams develop, and I know that one or two of them have already held their first meeting which is fantastic – you will start to hear more about these PETs soon – you can also watch this short animation to find out more about what they are.

Local Objectives
One of the first tasks that the People Engagement Teams will have, is to develop local improvement objectives, based on the results of the staff survey. These are separate to our corporate People Plan objectives and are more focused on local improvement, rather than at a Trust-wide level.

Pulse Survey

The Q1 Pulse Survey has launched today and is our first opportunity to ‘check-in’ following the annual staff survey – this is part of our year-round approach to talking about the staff survey.

In January, we achieved a response rate of 40 per cent – which is our highest ever as an organisation and one of the highest response rates in the Midlands region as a whole – this time, we want to try and achieve 45% – so please do take just five minutes to complete it.

You can click on the link below – it will ask for your e-mail address, but this is just to authenticate you as a member of staff – it is not to identify your answers – the survey is 100% anonymous, I, nor any other member of staff in the organisation will know who has said what.

Please do prioritise giving us your feedback.

https://picker.fra1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_b8cMes96Xg3Nk1g?&Trust%20Code=RXK

I started my message by saying what a wonderful building Midland Met is, but it looks so much better now we can start to have ‘our people’ inside. In her message last week, Mel Roberts, our Chief Nurse, touched on ‘soft-activation’ and what this means, but on Tuesday this week, some of our ward services colleagues were the very first SWB employees (not working on the programme itself) to start working within Midland Met – without a bit of PPE in sight. They were doing a clinical clean in the pathology department, ready for the first bit of equipment being delivered.

You can see more of what they got up to here: Add soft activation videos

Have a lovely weekend.

Kind regards,

Richard

Paediatrics play team Eid gift appeal

As part of  Eid celebrations, our paediatric team is working together with colleagues from the British Islamic Medical Association, who are made up of healthcare professionals who work with communities to help health inequalities and organize various events.

Such as ‘ Toys4Eid’ which aims to distribute toys to children from all backgrounds in hospitals during Eid.

If you’d like to donate a gift, check out the Amazon wishlist here and select delivery for Lyndon Ground Floor.

For more information please email trustcharity@nhs.net.

Soft activation begins at Midland Met

Midland Metropolitan University Hospital (MMUH) will open to patient services in October 2024. Over the coming months, things will move at pace as we gear up to safely move into and open MMUH.

We have sprung into spring this April and have now entered a period of soft activation at Midland Met. This means we will see some equipment (such as pathology and imaging) installed, and teams such as IT and security continuing their work to ensure that we have digital coverage inside the building and that CCTV and alarm systems are working as we need them to.

This week is significant as it’s the first time colleagues have been allowed on site to participate in soft activation activities. Some colleagues will be preparing their areas to have equipment installed. This approach will ensure we ultimately stay on track to open later this year.

Other activity on site includes the delivery of furniture and equipment (i.e., fridges and freezers) required to support the pathology analyser work. IT will test ports, and coax cables in the car parks, continue work in core node rooms, and we will see the fit out of the Q-Park car park office w/c 8 April.

The next step after soft activation will be the official handover of Midland Met from Balfour to the Trust. At this point we will begin our main activation period to get the hospital ready to welcome colleagues and our first patients.

Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion conference: 7 June

Come and join the Black Country Integrated Care System Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion conference on Friday 7 June, 9.15am – 4.30pm at Walsall Football Club.

Hear about the progress with the implementation of our Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) Strategy, the six pledges aligned with the national NHS England EDI improvement plan and have the opportunity to participate in break-out sessions and interactive panel discussions with prominent senior leaders.

You can find more information on the event here.

To register your interest, please complete the registration form.

Attendance must be registered by Wednesday 10 April. Due to a limited number of spaces, please register early to avoid disappointment. Please email bcicb.workforce@nhs.net for any further queries.

PSIRF launched!

The new Patient Safety Incident Response Framework (PSIRF) has now gone live!

To get in contact with the patient safety team going forward, please email swbh.patientsafety@nhs.net.

As part of the launch, we will be hosting a learning session in the conference room in the Sandwell Education Centre on Thursday 11 April, 2pm – 4pm.

The session will be broken into the following parts:

• PSIRF: 2pm – 2.30pm
• SWARM huddle: 2.30pm – 3pm
• AAR (after action review): 3pm – 3.30pm
• SEIPS (system engineering initiative for patient safety): 3.30pm – 4pm

For more information and everything PSIRF, please visit the PSIRF Connect page.

Tram and bridge works commencing from 23 March

Colleagues are advised to allow extra time to their route to factor in these delays.

Please see the infographic attached for more information.