Monthly archives: October 2024

Take a walk through the wards at Midland Met with us

To help you find your way around Midland Met, we’ve created simple ward videos to guide you to departments and wards.

Watch the route to the Trauma and Orthopaedic ward with Ward Sister, Felicia, here.

IT maintenance: 11 November, 2am – 6am and 12 November, 10pm – 6am

Please be aware an essential IT maintenance will be taking place on Monday 11 November from 2am to 6am and from 10pm overnight to Tuesday 12 November, 6am to carry out security patching and reboots to ensure the Trust’s systems remains compliant.

On Monday 11 November from 2am to 6am and again from 10pm overnight to Tuesday 12 November 6am Unity will remain fully available;

• Equitrac Printing services – Ricoh MFD (multi-functional device) printers and scan to email functionality. All other printing such as labels, pathology specimen and desktop printing will remain available as normal.
• Wristband printing  

Colleagues will need to ensure they revert to local business continuity plans during this time.

This timeslot has been chosen as a quieter time operationally and the activity will be closely monitored by 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 or via Chat with the IT Service Desk

Unity printing maintenance: 21 November, 10pm – 11pm

Please be aware essential Unity maintenance will be taking place on Thursday 21 November to ensure the supporting infrastructure remains secure and security compliant. The work is scheduled to begin at 10pm for approximately one hour and should be completed by 11pm.

During this time Unity will remain fully available; however from 10pm until 11pm on Thursday 21 November Unity printing will be unavailable for up to one hour at the following site locations:

• Sandwell – all areas
• City – all areas
• BMEC – all areas
• BTC – all areas

o This will affect specimen label, requisition, and pharmacy printing.

o Any print jobs submitted during this time will be held and printed once the print servers come back online.

If clinical staff are due to collect a sample between time above, we would advise them to wait until specimen labelling functionality returns. If staff have a very urgent specimen to collect that cannot wait to collect and send to pathology, then a manual pathology request form will need to be completed and sent with the sample. It is envisaged that this requirement will be rare and unlikely at those times.

The activity will be closely monitored by 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 or via chat with the IT service desk.

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

Essential clinical support system (CSS) maintenance will be taking place on Wednesday 6 November 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

Telephone diverts

We have a new and improved telephone service meaning diverts can be controlled by you without any need to contact IT.

Please see below on how to use the divert:

To add divert:

• dial #9 then the number you need to call within the Trust (please add 9 to this if it is an external number you are contacting)
• for example – #9907123 456789

To remove divert:

• dial ##9

 

Warren Chapman closes his final chapter at City

After nearly four decades since his career began, Warren Chapman is preparing to say farewell to a place that has been more than just a hospital to him.

As November approaches, so do the final farewells to a hospital that has been a cornerstone of the community since 1887. For Warren and many others, City Hospital – once known as Dudley Road Hospital – is far more than just a place of work. It’s been a place where careers have grown, friendships have been made, and memories have been created.

Warren’s journey at City Hospital began in November 1984, when he first donned his uniform as a student nurse. “I started my nurse training right here, at Dudley Road. I qualified in 1987 and took my first post in Trauma and Orthopaedics on Ward D9,” he recalls. It was the start of a long career in healthcare that, despite a brief detour, Warren never lost touch with.

That detour took him to Birmingham Accident Hospital and later into the world of advertising copywriting. But despite trying new things, the pull to come back was strong. “I continued working here on weekends,” Warren says, “and by 1994, I decided to return full time.” His return led him to the field of endoscopy, where he has dedicated himself to the specialty for 30 years.

[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BSOx3BRH9bM[/embed]

Warren’s role has evolved over his career. One of his proudest achievements was being among the first nurses in the UK to perform endoscopy procedures – traditionally a role reserved for doctors. Today, he is the specialty lead for endoscopy at SWB, managing his endoscopy lists and seeing patients in clinic. “When I started, you didn’t see nurses doing things like this,” Warren explained. “Now, we’re performing roles that used to be done by doctors. It’s a huge shift.”

But it’s not just the advancements in medicine and technology that Warren remembers most—it’s the people. The diversity of the workforce has been a memorable part of his career. “When I first started, I worked alongside the Windrush generation,” he says. “I was fortunate to learn from their experiences and be enriched by the culture my new colleagues brought.”

Over the years, City Hospital became even more diverse, welcoming staff from the Indian subcontinent, the Philippines, Nepal, and Africa. “The multiculturalism of the workforce and the patients has made City Hospital such a vibrant, welcoming place.”

Among his fondest memories, Warren speaks about the band he co-founded at the Trust, The Corridors, named after the hospital’s main spine, that many bandmates worked on. “It was supposed to be a one-off performance for the Year 2000 Trust celebrations, but we played as a band for a decade. We played at Trust functions, private events and pubs. The band included a surgeon, a gastroenterologist, two operating department practitioners from Theatres, my sister, and me. It was such a fun and unexpected part of my career here.”

As we prepare to make the final moves to Midland Met, Warren told us: “I’m looking forward to working in a modern hospital with state-of-the-art facilities. The Winter Garden looks like a fantastic place to take a break, so I’ll be grabbing a drink there.”

Warren added: “It’s fitting that as we approach November 2024, it will mark exactly 40 years since I started here as a student. It feels like the closing of one chapter and the start of another.”

Outside of work, Warren’s passions continue to grow. Recently, he added “author” to his list of accomplishments, publishing his first book, Koftas and Yellow Rice.

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Your latest Midland Met line manager briefing: 28 October

In case you missed the Get Set For Midland Met: Line manager briefing from earlier this week, please see the video below to watch back the session.

You can also access the slides from the session here – Get Set for Midland Met Line Manager Briefing 28 October

As we gear up to Get set for Midland Met, it is important to attend line manager briefings if you can. These take place bi-weekly and will involve our directorate and group leaders.

The next meeting is on Monday 25 November, 12pm – 1pm. Click here to join the meeting.

One Health and Care system downtime: 7 November, 10am – 4pm

Please be advised the One Health and Care system will be undergoing essential maintenance on Thursday 7 November between the hours of 10am – 4pm.

During this time the One Health and Care link in Unity will not return any data, this will have no impact on any other Trust system and the rest of Unity will continue work as expected. The Health Information Exchange (HIE) will also continue to work as expected during this time allowing access to West Birmingham and Sandwell GP records.

Colleagues should not use the system during the maintenance window as data may only be partially complete.

Reminder – MMUH Staff Car Park

For the attention of all staff working at MMUH utilise the staff parking via London St.

The barriers for this car park are now fully operational and we have been informed that some staff have been forgetting their cards to gain access. Because of this, staff are being pushed to patient parking and are being told to pay.

To avoid this happening – please remember your car park entry cards.

Chief Executive’s Message – Friday 25 October

This week I wanted to share some important feedback with our teams. Thanks to everyone for their hard work and continued resilience moving into the new hospital. This has presented several challenges. Some of these challenges relate to our teams having done 6 months’ worth of activation and induction work in 6 weeks. Some of them relate to the building, some of them to how we wish to operate within the building. In addition, I am very conscious of how urgent care services have been under significant strain. We must remember we haven’t delivered our City Hospital move to MMUH yet and as such, the seven-day care model and workforce resilience is yet to kick in.

Listening to and responding to your feedback is imperative for us and I want to assure you that we will do so.

For example, we understand agile working is a different way of working for us all and we are working on making pragmatic changes to the agile working approach in this new working environment. What I would ask is you be kind and supportive to colleagues and use the booking system to book a desk area if you need one or work across our other sites if you don’t need to be at MMUH specifically. In addition, we understand signage in some areas may need to be improved/reworked. A wayfinding working group has quickly been set up to monitor and develop this work and we will highlight updates to the organisation as we have them. We have also heard from colleagues about more working areas and will be looking at the Winter Garden “pods” as areas to use and book in the future.

As part of our settling in period and as we prepare for our upcoming moves, we would like to hear your feedback. There is a short survey to complete which will enable to capture your views about the settling period – please complete it would be very useful . https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/midlandmet.

With all of this in the background I would remind colleagues, that our move to MMUH is still not fully complete, so there will be, and are some moving issues that we need to get right and be mindful of during the next two key move dates.  As the new hospital remains half open, with our next moves taking place on 6 November (maternity, neonates and gynae) and 10 November (rest of City Hospital) whilst we are still commissioning some of these areas, some equipment has already been put out in preparation for these moves. Please do not take items just because an area isn’t open. If you are missing equipment, please raise it via the correct routes and it will be fixed. We run the risk of being short of vital equipment for our next moves if colleagues move/take equipment that is not theirs to take .

I also wanted in this week’s message to allude to two more things. Firstly, earlier in September, Lord Darzi published his independent review of the NHS which was intended to start and open and honest conversation about the state of the NHS and the reforms needed Lord Darzi published his independent review of the NHS, this also lends itself to wanting to share open and honest feedback. With this in mind,  I would urge colleagues to ensure that they complete their NHS Staff Survey. I am also pleased to say that our response to National Staff Survey has increased this week to 17 per cent, however, this is still lower than when we would expect it to be and much lower than most Trusts. If you have been sent an email, please respond as soon as you can, and we will continue to share benchmarking and how we are doing as an organisation as we move forward. If you have not received your link or have any issues please swbh.comms@nhs.net.

Secondly, a reminder and one of some urgency we must as a Trust ensure that we hit our 65 week trajectory for elective care and meet the route to zero in November. This is a non-negotiable national ask, and is absolutely the right thing to do for our patients. Please do everything you can in your area of speciality to ensure we are on target for this.

Finally, this month is Freedom to Speak Up Month and I want to thank our FTSU Guardians who do a fantastic job. In addition, tomorrow you are able to join the first ever Black Country FTSU Conference.   Staff from across our local Black Country Integrated Care System are invited to attend this key event as part of our commitment to make speaking up business as usual for everyone. The conference will take place on Friday 25 October, 9am – 3.30pm via the Microsoft Teams platform and there will be inspiring talks from a range of speakers. The conference will focus on the power of listening and encouraging everyone to feel confident to speak up. In case you missed it,  be sure to check out this video featuring colleagues from across the Black Country talking about the importance of speaking up.

On a final note, I would like to say a huge thank you and good luck to Martin Sadler, Executive Director for IT & Digital, who leaves us to join Birmingham City Council.  Martin’s legacy is a strong one, with a strong focus on customer service and responsiveness.  Mark Taylor will be Interim Director of IT and Digital reporting through to Dave Baker, Chief Strategy Officer for a fixed term period and we are very much looking forward to Mark being in the role. Martin’s role as FTSU executive lead will also be passed onto to Mark Anderson, Chief Medical Officer who is very much looking forward to supporting the work the FTSU team and guardians do/undertake.