Monthly archives: May 2024
Palliative care teaching sessions
Face to face training sessions to consolidate essential palliative care training set on ESR are now available. Please ensure you complete the necessary modules on ESR prior to attending this training:
Training for qualified nurses:
- Monday 3 June – room 15, Sandwell education centre
- Thursday 9 July – Hayward Room, Post Graduate Centre, City Hospital
Training for health care assistants:
- Monday 10 June – room 9, Sandwell education centre
- Thursday 23 July – room 15, Sandwell education centre
Training for allied health professionals:
- Monday 17 June – room 15, Sandwell education centre
To reserve a place please book on via ESR -381 end of life/palliative care training
Staff induction site tours at Midland Met
Staff induction site tours at Midland Met are now open for booking and will be taking place throughout the summer, running right up until a week before we move in.
Site tours are for colleagues who will be primarily based or will work at Midland Met, as part of their role.
To ensure a seamless onboarding experience, we request your staff number or national insurance number when booking your induction site tour. These unique identifiers allow us to verify your completion of the site induction tour. Your staff number can be easily located on ESR by accessing your payslip and submitting your assignment number from the top left-hand corner.
What to expect:
- A 60-minute journey through Midland Met (inc. car parks, Winter Garden facilities, lift navigation, a ward and our emergency department front door)
- Guided Induction tours led by our knowledgeable staff members
- Insights into the advanced technology and design features at Midland Met
- Opportunities to ask questions and engage with your tour guide
- Tour groups of up to 12
- Useful plans and navigation tips provided to help you get to grips with Midland Met
- Access to Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Secure your spot now!
To book your place on a tour, simply pick a session and complete a booking on eventbrite.
Please ensure that you complete all fields, including job title, line manager on the booking form, otherwise your place won’t be reserved. This helpful guide is available to help you book your site tour.
Click here for available tour dates.
We strongly advise that all managers have the responsibility to book staff onto these tours to manage rota and staff capacity. However, should colleagues choose to make a self-booking – please be sure to obtain approval from your line manager, before doing so.
Clean air zone medical travel survey
The clean air zone in Birmingham has been live since 2021. At Birmingham Children’s Hospital and other medical facilities in the zone, patients and their carers/parents with older vehicles are currently able to obtain a medical exemption voucher so that they do not pay the £8 daily fee.
The council’s clean air zone team are conducting a survey of travel needs to consider this exemption, which is due to end soon.
Anyone wanting to complete the survey can do so by clicking here.
For more information on Birmingham City Council’s clean air zone please visit www.brumbreathes.co.uk.
The importance of completing your OPs and SOPs
As the opening of Midland Met approaches, the finalisation of operational policies (OPs) including standard operating procedures (SOPs) is now a critical priority.
These comprehensive documents provide detailed, written instructions to ensure consistency and quality in how we will operate in our new hospital. They are the backbone of our operational success, and we need all colleagues responsible for completing them to make it a priority.
Why OPs and SOPs matter
Operational policies and standard operating procedures are essential for several reasons:
- Consistency and quality assurance: SOPs ensure that every task is performed consistently and to the same high standard, regardless of who carries it out. We must maintain the quality and safety standards that our patients expect and deserve, and SOPs allow us to do that.
- Compliance and safety: OPs and SOPs help ensure compliance with regulations and standards. They also contribute to workplace safety by providing clear guidelines on safe practices and procedures.
- Efficiency and productivity: Well documented procedures streamline operations, allowing colleagues to complete tasks efficiently, leading to higher productivity and the optimal use of resources.
- Training and onboarding: With clear and precise SOPs, new team members can be inducted into SWB quickly and effectively. SOPs are a valuable training tool – they help to support learning and minimise errors.
- Continuous improvement: OPs and SOPs are live documents that can be updated and refined over time. This adaptability enables continuous improvement in our processes.
Deadline
The deadline for completing all operating policies including SOPs is Friday, 31 May.
These documents are pivotal to the successful opening of Midland Met. Your operational policies will form part of the staff induction that will be finalised in June.
Every team must prioritise completing their operational policies to meet the deadline. Delays in finalising them could impact our ability to deliver services effectively and safely when we open to patients in October.
Next steps
We urge all teams to dedicate the necessary resources and attention to completing their operational polices on time. It will ensure we open Midland Met with robust and well-defined procedures.
The opening of Midland Met marks a significant milestone for SWB and our communities. Completing our OPs and SOPs by the end of May is crucial.
Should you have any queries or difficulty in meeting the deadline please contact your business change managers.
Trust VPN service replacement continues until 1 June
Currently, Pulse VPN is used for home workers to connect to the Trust Network remotely.
We are replacing Pulse VPN with a new Microsoft Always On VPN (AOVPN). The benefits of this are that it works seamlessly with Windows so users shouldn’t have to do any manual intervention, it’s faster and more reliable.
To minimise user impact the current Pulse VPN will continue to work alongside AOVPN. The Pulse VPN client will only be disabled when we are satisfied that a reliable connection to the new AOVPN service has been established.
There should be no impact to service, if any issues occur, please re-connect to Pulse and report it to the service desk.
When will this happen:
The new AOVPN service will be introduced in phases – as described below:
- Friday 24 May – Friday 31 May – disable Pulse VPN on devices that have successfully connected
- Saturday 1 June – remove Pulse VPN client from devices
What will happen:
Some users may be prompted to select a certificate when connecting to Pulse VPN. Please select the one with the oldest date/time and click Connect.
Once the AOVPN settings have been rolled out to your PC you will see your device connected to “SWBH Always On VPN”.
Should anything go wrong, please contact the service desk using the following:
- Ext. 4050
- The chat function via Teams
- In-person
- swbh.4050@nhs.net
Access to communication and technology (ACT) Training
Access to communication and technology (ACT) is the specialised NHS England service for augmentative alternative communication and environmental controls in the West Midlands; covering the West Midlands county, Shropshire, Staffordshire, Warwickshire, Worcestershire and Herefordshire.
ACT no longer has a waiting list and there is a project to re-launch training.
ACTs referral and helpline has now returned to 3 days a week – Monday/Wednesday/Friday – 9am 4pm.
If you would be interested in hearing more about what’s new in ACT and the plan to re-launch ACT training, click here to subscribe to the 2024 mailing list by adding your details to the survey.
Blood culture training: 29 and 30 May
Blood culture training is aimed at clinical colleagues who are competent in venepuncture and work in an area where blood cultures are taken.
Coleagues who wish to undertake training will need to discuss this with their line manager in the first instance and will need to complete the online training before attending the practical training with the IPC Team. Please see e-Learning instructions here.
Blood culture training dates are below:
- Wednesday 29 May, 1.30pm – 3.30pm, Sandwell Education Centre, clinical skills
- Thursday 30 May, 10am – 12pm, Postgraduate Centre, clinical skills.
Note: If you wish to be a blood culture coach, make this known to the assessor on the day of training.
Please email susan.ward8@nhs.net to book a place or call ext. 5195 or 5197.
Let’s get clinical – consultants praise Midland Met
Last Friday, an important site visit took place with the senior members of the clinical team at our Trust. Led by the Group Director of Medicine and Emergency Care, Dr Chetan Varma, the team of consultants made some insightful discoveries around the build in its current state and how it will support patient care.
Dr Varma commented: “Having acute care in one place is exciting. By bringing the teams at City and Sandwell together, we’re allowing our patients to receive the right care in the right place. The state-of-the-art facilities are incredible and it’s clear to see that there’s the potential for a lot of good work here.”
Leading the way to Midland Met
As progress at Midland Met continues, staff inductions are confirmed to begin in July, ahead of the move in October 2024. Being a crucial part of our hospital move, we’ll bring you a series of profiles with our induction leads so you can learn more about the induction process.
The first in our series is Lead Medical Examiner Officer – Claire Jones. Having worked at the Trust for 29 years, Claire started her current role two years ago.
Based at Sandwell General Hospital, Claire works alongside the medical examiners in reviewing the Unity notes of deceased patients. It is to ensure the cause of death is accurate and that the care given on the ward was appropriate.
Claire comments: “I’ve loved working at the Trust for many years and enjoy my current role. We speak to bereaved families to explain the cause of death and allow them to ask any questions, give feedback and raise concerns. We have 17 medical examiners and four medical examiner officers in our team.”
Naturally, Claire wants the induction experience to be positive for her team. “I think it’s important to keep the team informed of the plans so they feel ready for the opening of Midland Met. I try to address as many questions and queries from my team.”
Claire describes what she’s most looking forward to around the induction, “I’m looking forward to the team being able to see Midland Met and being able to reassure them before the move of what is to come. The team is excited after hearing such good things about the new hospital. Although change can be worrying, it’s a new and long-awaited step forward that will be positive for the Trust.
“The move should be quite easy for us, as most of the team’s work is paperless. So essentially, it’s easy to do our jobs with a good desk and computer.”
As we continue our journey to Midland Met, keep an eye out for more in our series of induction lead profiles.
Find out more about the One Health and Care Shared Care Record!
We will be hosting two drop-in sessions for SWB colleagues to find out more about the One Health and Care Shared Care Record and how it will benefit them on the following dates:
- Thursday 13 June: City, Archers foyer (or seating area), 10am – 2pm
- Monday 17 June: Sandwell, Hallam Restaurant foyer, 10am – 2pm
Goodies will also be available at the stand, so we encourage all staff to pop by and learn more about the One Health and Care Shared Care Record!
For further details about the One Health and Care Shared Care Record, please click here.
There is a video tutorial on how to use the One Health and Care Shared Care Record which can be accessed by clicking here.
Black Country ICS web pages also include training resources which can be accessed by clicking here.
Share your views about the One Health and Care Shared Care Record by completing this short survey.
For more information please email markhaynes@nhs.net.
← Older items Newer items →