Monthly archives: June 2024

Join us for Alcohol Awareness Week: 1 – 7 July

This year’s Alcohol Awareness Week takes place from 1 – 7 July and for this year the theme is understanding alcohol harm.

Are you curious about the impact alcohol may or may not be having on you or someone else? Want to know more about its short and long term effects, its effects on your physical mental health, on families, society, money and even crime? Want to know about units or even try some alcohol free drinks? If so why not pop along to one of the alcohol awareness stands being hosted by our alcohol care team from 1.30pm – 3.30pm at the below locations.

• Tuesday 2 July, main entrance at City A&E
• Wednesday 3 July, main entrance at Sandwell, ground floor by the lifts

What else is happening at these events?

• Free prizes – with information around alcohol awareness
• Sweets giveaway
• Poster/display board with information around alcohol misuse
• Beer goggles for staff/public to try as demonstration of alcohol effects.

The alcohol care team will be on hand answering your questions, offering advice, handouts and signposting to a variety of alcohol support services across the borough.

For more information please email amy.thompson18@nhs.net.

Would you like four weeks of free bus travel?

As part of our on-going commitment to easing car parking congestion and promoting sustainable travel, we are excited to offer a free four week bus pass for staff who are:

• Relocating workplace as a result of MMUH opening
• New starter at SWB
• Travel to work by taxi

This pilot offer, in collaboration with NX Bus, aims to provide you with a stress-free alternative to driving, addressing concerns raised by our staff regarding parking challenges. Getting the bus can contribute to a healthier, happier you, and a healthier planet.

Note: The ticket is valid for four weeks once activated. The offer is strictly one ticket per person.

Colleagues must complete the form in the link to request a bus pass and not to email.

To find out more or register your interest, please click here to complete the short form.

Development and implementation of Local Patient Safety Standards for Invasive Procedures

Updated standards for National Safety Standards for Invasive Procedures (NatSSIPs 2) were then introduced in 2023. These standards provided a structured approach to safety of procedures performed inside or outside of operating theatres. These improvements were done to standardise, harmonise and educate teams to reduce errors and further enhance teamworking. The implementation ‘key stop/s’ culture was put into place to act like a gatekeeper before continuing onto the next step of the pathway, this input made sure a further supporting mechanism was in place for the checklist.

The NatSSIPs 2 standards should be used to develop your own Local Patient Safety Standards for Invasive Procedures (LocSSIPs). LocSSIPs are basically Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) used as a checklist to that ensure safe care is delivered to patients undergoing invasive procedures inside and outside of operating theatres. The eight sequential steps to follow for safer invasive procedures in your checklist are:

Do you want to update/develop a LocSSIP checklist? The clinical effectiveness can provide interested teams with help and support to update/develop their LocSSIPs. For more information please email swbh.auditteam-clineffec@nhs.net

Note: LocSSIP must follow Trust policy – you can access the policy by clicking here.

Do you know about Wagestream?

Wagestream is a secure financial wellbeing app that gives you access to a toolkit of simple-to-use, financial products and services that can help you to feel more in control of your finances.

Personal expenses and pay cycles don’t always align, so having control over your pay at a time you need it can help to foster financial wellbeing. Wagestream offers the ability to access up to 50 per cent of the wages you have earned so far in-month, for a small transaction fee of £1.95, helping to avoid the need for loans and high interest rates. The app also allows you to track your earnings, save for a rainy day and access a range of financial wellbeing resources. Find out more on Connect.

For more information please email lisa.beadle@wagestream.com.

World Sickle Cell Day – 19 June

On Wednesday 19 June, we are celebrating World Sickle Cell Day.

The team will be raising awareness of the disease with a special event in the Wolston Theatre, Postgraduate Centre, City from 10.30am – 4pm

Colleagues can find out more by chatting with the staff and patients. Snacks and refreshments will be available.

If you would like to know more information, please call the team on 0121 507 6040 or email swbh.scatpatients@nhs.net.

NHSBT and NHSE blood testing programme – sickle cell and thalassaemia

Nurses can offer extended blood group testing to everyone with sickle cell, thalassaemia, and transfusion dependent rare anaemias.

Patients can give a sample at a routine appointment to enable DNA-based testing of extended blood groups. That will enable better blood matching in the future, reducing the risk of antibody formation.

The support of haemoglobinopathy nurses is vital because of their close relationships with people affected.

NHS England and NHS Blood and Transplant are working in partnership on the testing programme, which started in January and is currently free to hospitals.

Find out more here.

We want your feedback on PSIRF implementation!

At the start of April the Patient Safety Incident Response Framework (PSIRF) replaced the Serious Incident Framework, marking a significant shift in how we manage patient safety incidents. Now, we want to hear from you about this change!

Why is your feedback important?

Your insights are crucial for understanding how the new framework is working in practice and identifying areas for improvement. Your feedback will help us ensure that PSIRF effectively enhances patient safety and supports our continuous improvement efforts.

Please take just a few minutes to complete our feedback form by clicking here. Your input is invaluable to us and how we move forward with PSIRF.

Note: The closing date to give your feedback is Sunday 30 June.

For more information and everything PSIRF, please visit the PSIRF Connect page or email swbh.patientsafety@nhs.net

Thank you for your commitment to patient safety.

Chief Executive’s Message – Friday 14 June

Following the launch of the new Patient Safety Incident Response Framework (PSIRF) on 1 April, it has been full steam ahead to implement the new ways of working.  This is a radically different approach to improving patient safety in all NHS organisations and its vital that all colleagues understand it, as it is a significant departure from how the NHS has managed patient safety for many, many years.

The patient safety team have been working closely with clinical teams to support the new processes, if you or your team would like further information, training, or support – please contact the patient safety team or look at the Connect pages.

The purpose of the new method of incident investigation is to identify areas of improvement in processes and procedures and to empower teams to manage their incidents in a proportionate way.  We’re pleased to see so many embracing the changes.

Teams have raised concerns about the challenges to completing SWARM huddles, sometimes due to how the teams operate or due to time and capacity constraints. A SWARM huddle is a hot debrief which is used immediately after or the same day the event has occurred – more information on this is available here.

There are a few things to remember about SWARMS:

1. You don’t have to do a SWARM for every single incident – prioritise those where you feel it would be beneficial to have a brief chat to make sure everyone is ok and that you have identified any issues that need to be addressed.
2. A SWARM huddle should be considered a snapshot of the contributory factors surrounding the incident. This should include the views of all parties where possible e.g. HCA, nurse, medic, AHP, porter
3. SWARMs should be done within the first 24 hours of the incident, if they are not then it will become an After Action Review (AAR).
4. If your SWARM huddle is delayed until a shift end, please note your thoughts down somewhere to make sure you do not miss any contributory factors when you recall it later.
5. You do not need to re-type your SWARM template into the Safeguard record, you can just attach the template to the incident record – scan or photograph.

Now that we have nearly three months of data to review and analyse trends in incidents, you will see our first issue of the PSIRF newsletter coming soon.  You will see what is happening across the Trust, the actions taken as part of your incident reports and the improvements planned.

We also need your help! As part of PSIRF we will identify four themes each year, which we will do a deeper analysis of and construct improvement plans around the findings.  This year’s themes are:

• Deteriorating patient (This is vital as we have an annual plan objective this year to improve our approach to the management of deteriorating patients)
• Medication prescription
• Discharge and transfer
• Vulnerable people – with a focus on mental capacity

There will be links in this month’s QIHD e-mail and in our communications bulletin, where you can tell us your challenges to delivering the care you want to deliver.  Your voice matters in identifying your challenges and in creating the solutions. Please take the time to complete them when you can. The team will summarise your feedback and share the results with you.

There will also be a link to gather your feedback on your PSIRF experience – again we want your thoughts on how you have experienced the change, ways to continually improve the process and any suggestions you want to make.

Thank you again for embracing the changes and remember if you want any further training, information or support please contact the patient safety team.

Finally, thank you to those of you who took the time to attend the financial recovery programme workshops that have taken place – I hope that you have them both interesting and useful and I know there have been some excellent conversations. If you weren’t able to attend the sessions and have some ideas around how we could improve our productivity or reduce our costs, please do e-mail the financial recovery team on swbh.recoverypmo@nhs.net.

Have a good weekend.

Richard

Upper GI Cancer referral email address update

Colleagues who wish to submit ‘ Upper GI Cancer ‘ referrals must ensure they are using the correct email address, to prevent any referrals from getting missed.

All referrals must be emailed to swbh.upper-gi-mdt-coordinator@nhs.net

Do you work here at the trust with a member of your family?

As part of the NHS birthday and our People of SWB campaign, we are on the hunt for colleagues who have family members working alongside them. This could be your son, daughter, brother, sister, aunty, uncle or grandparent – we want to showcase you!

All it requires is 5 to 10 minutes of your time, where Hermione from our Communications Team will take a picture of you both and ask you to answer a few questions about your time working here

If you would like to get involved, please contact Hermione on 07977 704 705