Monthly archives: June 2024

Moving and grooving – Jayne Dunn praises mock move week

Last week we celebrated a successful mock move week.

We spoke to colleagues about the processes and learnings involved to take forward into the real move this October. Director of Commissioning, Jayne Dunn, was delighted with the outcomes of the week.

Jayne commented: “It was a brilliant opportunity to test our proposed timings and processes for safely moving patients from Sandwell and City sites into Midland Met in the autumn.

“We tested several variations of the patient journey where each journey was tested from a bed space on an existing ward or department to a bed space at Midland Met. This included the patient journey of an adult ward patient from Sandwell; an adult ward patient from City, an adult critical care patient, a paediatric patient from Sandwell, a paediatric high dependency patient, a maternity patient and a neonatal baby.”

Jayne noted the level of engagement from the teams. “The engagement throughout the week has been fantastic. The clinical teams, wards and departments were brilliant. Likewise, the support teams including porters, housekeeping, infection prevention and control were all fantastic. We’d like to thank the medical engineering and our external patient transport providers, WMAS, ACCOTS and KIDS. A big thank you to HCR, Balfour Beatty, Siemens and our volunteer ‘mock’ patients too.”

Overall, valuable discussions took place with lots of reflection, confirmation of planned times and processes, and ways to improve plans. As October draws closer, the important practice run has given teams an opportunity to prepare further ahead of the move.

Hazard alert! – Marsha Jones gives important reminder on clinical hazards

As you may know, a crucial part of the Midland Met project is to report your clinical hazards. We’re reminding colleagues to report these throughout the process, as an essential part of our clinical safety case.

Associate Deputy Chief Nurse, Marsha Jones, speaks to us about the importance of reporting. “It’s essential at this stage of the process to report clinical hazards, to capture potential sources of patient harm because of service changes within Midland Met or our SWB estate. We define a hazard as anything that has the potential to cause harm due to way of the change in environment or change in pathway.”

Click here for more information and here for the clinical hazards form.

CareAware Cloud Migration change cancelled tonight

The CareAware Cloud Migration which was planned for tonight (Tuesday 25 June), 6pm overnight to tomorrow (Wednesday 26 June), 6am has now been postponed due to an issue on the Cerner side. The works will be rescheduled for a future date and once this has been confirmed, colleagues will be made aware of this.

We apologise for any inconvenience this may have caused you and your teams.

Should you have any further IT queries then please do contact the IT Service Desk on ext. 4050 or 0121 507 4050 or via Chat with the IT Service Desk.

HIE Portal maintenance: 27 June, 4.45pm – 5.45pm

Please be aware that essential IT maintenance will be taking place on Thursday 27 June, affecting the HIE Portal. The work is being carried out by our support vendor Cerner/Oracle and is scheduled to begin at 4.45pm for approximately one hour and should be completed after 5.45pm.

During this time Unity will remain fully available. However, the HIE Portal that displays Unity and GP information will be unavailable for up to one hour from 4.45pm to 5.45pm.

Please be assured GPs have alternate means to view this information via the ICE system. Trust clinicians only use HIE for supplementary GP information on occasion.

The activity will be closely monitored by our Cerner/Oracle and our IT support teams.
As always, should you have any further queries then please do contact the IT Service Desk on ext. 4050 or 0121 507 4050 for home workers or via service desk live chat.

Join us for the next 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!

The next session takes place on Thursday 27 June, 2pm – 3pm. 

Click here to join the meeting.

To catch up on the previous meetings, click here.

Temporary move of inpatient Eye Ward to D47

Colleagues should be aware that the inpatient eye ward will be moving temporarily from to D47 on Saturday 13 July 2024 (return date to be confirmed).

This is in response to both the disruption to staff and patients caused by work on D43 and to support the fire-enabling work on the eye ward.

Those members of staff who are involved will be informed. 

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

Essential clinical support system (CSS) maintenance will be taking place on Saturday 6 July 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.

Palliative Care teaching sessions

Face to face palliative care teaching sessions will be taking place for both qualified nurses, and HCA’s.

Note: Please ensure you complete the necessary modules on ESR prior to attending this training.

• Training for qualified nurses: Tuesday 9 July, Hayward room, postgraduate centre, City
• Training for HCA’s: Tuesday 23 July, education centre, room 15, Sandwell

To reserve your place, please book on via ESR (381 End of life/Palliative Care Training)

Chief Executive’s Message – Friday 21 June

Dear colleagues,

The next couple of Friday messages will be from me, as I am acting chief executive whilst Richard is enjoying some well-earned annual leave.

Having returned on Monday from two weeks of leave myself and feeling recharged after some rest and relaxation, I just wanted to start on the importance of making sure you take your annual leave.

The NHS remains a busy environment, not only for colleagues who are often at the forefront of critical and intense work environments, but this year we are busy preparing to move into our new hospital. Taking regular breaks is essential for your personal wellbeing and professional efficacy.

Working in the NHS is inherently demanding. You frequently encounter high-stress situations, long hours, and there are some emotionally taxing scenarios. Annual leave provides a necessary respite, allowing you to step away from the pressures of work, recharge your mental batteries, and return with a refreshed mindset.

It is vitally important – so please do ensure that you are using your annual leave days well and make time for ‘you’ too. Our staff are our most important asset.

I did really enjoy my two weeks off, but what an exciting week to come back to. This week has been our ‘mock move week’ – an opportunity to test out our proposed processes and timings for safely moving our patients from Sandwell and City Hospitals to Midland Met in October and November this year.

Alongside our move partner, Health Care Relocations (HCR), we tested a patient journey for an adult ward at both City and Sandwell, an adult critical care patient, a paediatric patient, a high dependency paediatric patient, as well as a maternity patient and a neonatal baby.

Each journey was tested from a bed space on an existing ward or department, to a bed space within Midland Met.

If you have heard me speak about Midland Met before, you will know that I often refer to the programme as being a team sport – and we have seen teamwork in abundance throughout this week. Our clinical and non-clinical teams have been working side by side, engaging with external partners, including West Midlands Ambulance Service, ACCOTS (for adult critical care patient transfers) and KIDS (for paediatric high dependency patient transfers).

The mock move test went really well and provided learning opportunities to take away and work with HCR and our move champions to look at how we can make any necessary changes and improvements before the real deal later this year.

Thank you to everyone who took part – especially to our ‘patients!’ Click here to see a short video if you want to see how we got on.

On Wednesday of this week Anna Lock one of our Deputy Chief Medical Officers, facilitated the first joint Primary and Secondary Care Interface collaboration event with Sandwell and West Birmingham based clinical colleagues.

As an integrated care organisation, collaboration across different service and disciplines is important and enables opportunities to learn, work more effectively and innovate. With this in mind and a desire to further improve the relationships, communication, and joint working between primary and secondary care, through better understanding of each other’s roles, remits, and challenges, the collaboration event explored how, regardless of where we work, that we ensure that we put the patients care at the centre of all we do.

The eagerness in the room to work in partnership and eliminate barriers of siloed working, improve flow across the ‘boundary’ and grasp the opportunities we have locally was evident.

Going forward Anna will co-chair, along with a primary care colleague, a Primary and Secondary Care Interface Group to build on this enthusiasm to work to nurture our professional relationships and re-design current models.

I am really looking forward to seeing how this work progresses – dates of future meetings will be publicised shortly and colleagues will be welcome to participate and share ideas. For more information/suggestions please contact: anna.lock@nhs.net

This week has also seen our Clinical Group reviews. These happen every month and are an opportunity for Executive Directors and the Clinical Group leadership teams to come together to review the delivery of this year’s priorities inclusive of the shortest time necessary in hospital, the numbers of patients we treat, deteriorating patients, staff survey, workforce oversight and finance.

As you will know in March this year, People Engagement Teams were set up to bring together colleagues from different backgrounds and roles, whose goal is to improve the working lives of staff within their local area – using the feedback that you give in the staff surveys as a starting point. I was delighted to see and hear how these are coming to life across the organisation with regards to staff engagement – and the motivation and enthusiasm that is accompanying it. There are some brilliant local recognition initiatives happening.

If you are interested in being part of a People Engagement Team, or in finding out more about the work they have planned in your group or directorate, please speak to your line manager.

Finally this week saw the Trust celebrate National Estates and Facilities Day. A huge thank you to all our staff who work behind the scenes to keep our hospitals services running. Their commitment to maintaining safe and efficient environment is crucial to patient care. Be sure to check out this video thanking colleagues for their hard work and dedication to SWB.

Have a wonderful weekend.
Rachel

Hearing awareness training – available for senior reception staff

The Birmingham Institute for the Deaf (BID) is hosting a free training session to our staff, following a review of the services for deaf community when visiting our sites.

The training is aimed at senior reception staff who can then cascade the training to their colleagues.

The session is for an hour and will only require staff to attend one session.

The sessions will be taking place in tutorial room 5, postgraduate centre, City, 10am – 12pm on the following dates:

• Tuesday 25 June
• Tuesday 9 July

If you would like to book on one these sessions please email shila.patel@nhs.net with your name, department, email address and the session you can attend.