Monthly archives: June 2024

Omnicell – Modernising Medication Management

This July, we’re introducing Omnicell to modernise our medicine management processes. Specialising in automated systems for medication management, Omnicell will help us to address current challenges and leverage cutting-edge technology to enhance patient care and safety.

We’re investing in Omnicell Automatic Dispensing Cabinets (ADCs) and Alphatron Smart Carts to improve our medication administration system. These will be deployed to most wards across Sandwell and City sites, as well as at Midland Met. To prepare for the move in October and November 2024, we’re getting everyone ready now.

Some of the key benefits of this new technology include:

• It ensures clear tracking from pharmacy to patient administration.
• We can keep a close watch on medication inventories.
• It will seamlessly integrate with our EPMA system in the future.
• Restocking of medications will be undertaken by pharmacy team

We’ll provide comprehensive training for all relevant teams, with super users leading peer training at the department level. To support a smooth transition, we will be monitoring feedback and adapting as needed. Soon, you’ll find information and FAQs on the intranet, and regular updates via staff communications.

Stay tuned for a video from Marc and Dionne, our Clinical Change Managers, showcasing an end-to-end workflow. The rollout schedule is as follows:

• Sandwell: July 2024
• City: August 2024

My part in Midland Met – Meet Richard Shinn

Since joining the Trust in August 2021, Richard Shinn has been a cornerstone of the Midland Met project. As an Informatics Project Manager his expertise has been pivotal in ensuring we are able to stay on track to deliver a hospital with an IT infrastructure that is second to none.

The MMUH IT programme, of which Richard is a member of, has an array of projects all aimed at preparing the new hospital for operational excellence.

Richard’s role involves managing a number of these crucial projects, including system configuration, mobile phone coverage, radio systems, and the bleep system. Each of these components plays a vital part in creating a seamless IT environment at Midland Met.

In anticipation of the opening of Midland Met, Richard and the rest of the MMUH IT Programme team are working hard to support operational teams. As the move-in date approaches, the focus intensifies on positioning end-user and medical devices precisely where they are needed, ensuring a smooth transition for all hospital staff.

Richard’s journey with the Midland Met project has been a profound learning experience. The scale and impact of this programme has provided him with unparalleled opportunities for professional growth. Surrounded by colleagues with extensive expertise, Richard has thrived in a supportive environment that values continuous learning and development.

For Richard, the most significant advantage of Midland Met is its potential to revolutionise patient care within a modern facility. The state-of-the-art environment promises to enhance the overall healthcare experience for patients and staff alike.

Looking ahead, Richard aspires to drive further digital transformation projects, enhancing not only Midland Met but also the broader Trust estate. His commitment to leveraging innovative technology promises to bring significant improvements in patient care and operational efficiency.

Catch up on the latest Midland Met Matters

Midland Met Matters is the monthly team round up sharing the latest updates from the Midland Met Programme Company. Whether it’s news on our progress or spotlights on the team, this is the place to be for all things Midland Met!

Thank you to everyone who joined us for the most recent session. If you missed it, take a look at the slides to discover the latest updates or watch the recording of the meeting.

Midland Met Matters TT – July 2024

Sandwell Day Nursery jungle fun day this Saturday!

Our Sandwell Day Nursery is hosting its annual summer fun day with the ‘ Jungle Fun’ theme on Saturday 29 June, 10am – 1pm.

There are lots of fun activities to get involved in from Walking the plank over the crocodile pool, face painting, glitter tattoos and fun games for all the family!

Not to mention a tombola and a raffle with some amazing prizes up for grabs!

Refreshments will be available throughout.

If you would like more information, please email emma.collier@nhs.net.

Education

Chief Executive’s Message – Friday 28 June

Dear colleagues,

As you will know, we are currently on the second day of the latest round of junior doctor industrial action – which will continue until 7am on Tuesday. Thank you to everyone who has been involved in the diligent planning to ensure we can maintain safe services during this period. As usual, I recognise many staff have gone the extra mile, on top of an already busy workload – thank you.

Throughout all the strike period, you have shown remarkable resilience and professionalism, ensuring that our patients continue to receive the highest standard of care. Your willingness to adapt, support one another, and go the extra mile has not gone unnoticed and is greatly appreciated – please continue this over the weekend and into next week.

The extended hours in our Costa outlets will continue today, through to Monday – the details of this are below.

The warm weather we have been experiencing over the last couple of days has also brought its challenges – trying to keep patients (and yourselves!) cool in our hospital buildings can be difficult. Although it is starting to cool down a little bit, there is some useful advice about dealing with the hot weather on Connect – you can find it here.

Last week the Quality Committee heard of the superb work of our organ donation team. The team has worked to build the organ donation service back up since the covid pandemic and during 2023-2024, they engaged with the families of 10 patients who sadly passed away in our hospitals. This meant that we were able to support 29 patients to benefit from the gift of organ donation. This is the highest number of recipients we have supported in the last 10 years. As well as hosting educational days about donation, their forward focus includes increasing the consent rate; working with the eye hospital on corneal tissue donation; promoting the organ donation week in September and work on the ongoing educational program. One of the biggest challenges with organ donation is families not being aware of their loved ones wishes – and encouraging people to have conversations is often the theme of organ donation week in September. Please don’t wait for this week – you can have this conversation any time – it might just save someone’s life.

This week, our People Committee discussed the growth in our staff engagement score. Between January and April of this year, this has increased by 6.4% – and is now at 6.7 (against a target of 7) – that is double our performance in the last 12 months. At the same time, our staff turnover rate is also at the lowest it has been for three years.  Our People Plan is all about ensuring that SWB is an excellent place for you to work – and these measures indicate to me that we are heading in the right direction. Thank you to everyone who has worked hard on helping us to achieve this including the local effort establishing the People Engagement Teams.

The next step with our engagement score is the launch of the Q2 Pulse Survey on Monday and it will run throughout July. Please do take just five minutes to complete it – it is important that we have this snapshot so we can continue to inform the work of our people engagement teams – who are starting to mobilise across the organisation and will be doing some really good and exciting work.

Finally – to end the week on a positive note, this week the Infrastructure Project Authority, which is the government’s centre of expertise for infrastructure and major projects,assessed our Readiness for Service.

During the review, 29 colleagues from the Trust, Balfour Beatty. EQUANS and our two integrated care systems (Black Country and Birmingham and Solihull) were interviewed. The key lines of enquiry included building readiness, staff readiness, move planning and benefits realisation. I met with the panel yesterday to hear their feedback; they praised our colleagues for their openness and called out many areas of good practice including collaborative partnerships, our approach to risk management and its use in complex decision making, our approach to benefits management and our preparation and planning for move.

They recognise there is still a lot to do to be operationally ready. For me this is great recognition of a massive team effort to move into our new hospital. The experience of the review itself and the recommendations they shared, offers an important learning opportunity to ensure we are ready as best we can be to open Midland Met successfully. Thanks to all of you that are working hard to be ready to move our first patients into Midland Met later this year.

Have a good weekend.

Rachel

Industrial action: 27 June – 2 July

The British Medical Association announced that industrial action by junior doctors will take place from Thursday 27 June, 7am – Tuesday 2 July, 7am.

The Trust is working closely with group leads to ensure robust plans are in place to maintain a safe level of service for patients and to support our colleagues who will be taking strike action.

There are a number of things that colleagues can do to help ensure the safe running of our services which we have listed below.

Planning a hospital discharge early

It’s vital we plan ahead especially during industrial action. 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:

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 contact the virtual ward on ext. 2664, (option 1, option 4) to discuss your patient with them. Our virtual wards cover the following specialities:

• Frailty
• Respiratory
• Cardiology
• Occupational therapy
• Paediatric (ext. 2602)

The service consists of MDT staffing support, including therapies, the integrated discharge hub and the wider community to support patients at home.  The virtual ward is available to all specialties where the patient meets the criteria and the team is able to support. If you are uncertain but believe your patient would benefit from the virtual ward, please contact the team.

IT support during industrial action

The IT service desk (ext. 4050) will extend their opening hours and will be available until midnight during the industrial action.

Informatics engineers will also be available onsite until midnight across the four days. There will also be IT floorwalkers going around to check on teams and give support where required this includes any issues regarding Unity.

An engineer will also be on-call after midnight and can be contacted via the main switchboard

Unity training

In order to support our more senior medical colleagues who are supporting the Trust during the industrial action, training material for Unity is available by clicking here.

Wellbeing

We will be supporting staff throughout the strike action, offering hot and cold food as well drinks during the extended opening hours at our Costa outlets. See times below:

The Trust fully recognises that colleagues may want to exercise their legal right to take strike action. We have created an updated frequently asked questions (FAQs) document which can be found on Connect for additional information and support about strike action.

There are three updated documents:

• Junior Doctors – Industrial Action
• Pay – Industrial Action
• Consultant/Medical Staff TOIL – Industrial Action

You can access them by clicking here.

We would welcome any additional questions that colleagues may have and would advise that these are directed to your group HR support or to contact the HR advice line on ext. 6680 or via email at swb-tr.SWBH-GM-HR-Enquiries@nhs.net with any queries you may have.

Update: Virgin Media Wi-Fi outage across the Black Country

Virgin Media have had a major outage with Wi-Fi impacting the Black Country area.

They have been working throughout the week to try and fix the fibres, but the issue has not been resolved yet however out IT team have stabilised services on the secondary resilient internet link and our user community are successfully working remotely.  

Users should now try using AO (always on) VPN and if they are still having issues connecting, they should contact the IT Service Desk on 0121 507 4050 or via chat with the IT Service Desk. When you have finished using your machine and no longer need to use AOVPN, please disconnect as we currently have limited capacity.

The outage will mainly affect people working remotely.  If you need access to the Trust network and are unable to do, please speak to your line manager and make arrangements to attend site.

Note: There are no current issues with any of our clinical systems.

BCPS Immunology experiencing technical delays

The Black Country Pathology Service (BCPS) Immunology are currently experiencing technical delays due to analyser downtime leading to a significant backlog of results.

If you require an urgent result, please telephone the laboratory on 01902 695279 or email  rwh-tr.ImmunologyLab@nhs.net

Employee Benefits: Find out what’s on offer

Did you know that SWB offers our employees a wide range of non-contractual benefits and recognition schemes? These complement some of the generous NHS terms and conditions on offer too.

We have created a ‘Reward and Recognition’ Guide to help you understand what’s on offer.

For queries regarding the specific options on offer, please contact the relevant department as indicated in the guide.