Monthly archives: December 2024

Are you on Blue Sky? Join us!

Our Communications Team have recently joined BlueSky!

The team will continue to promote important healthcare messages to our local population and staff alongside our other platforms, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, X (formerly Twitter) and TikTok.

If you have recently joined the platform and would like to connect with us, then please follow us on https://bsky.app/profile/swbhnhs.bsky.social.

Phone system maintenance today from 10pm until midnight

Please be aware that our telephony partner will be carrying out essential maintenance on the Trust’s phone system today (Tuesday, 17 December) from 10pm to midnight. This is to facilitate the migration of the main hospital numbers to the Trust’s new digital phone system.

From 10pm to midnight tonight, any calls made to the main City and Sandwell number will be unsuccessful. Callers will experience a dead line while the change takes place.

The following services will remain unaffected:

• Internal calls
• Outbound calls
• Direct calls to department/staff extensions
• Existing call diverts and answer machine functions
• The 8×8 solution
• The Bleeps application
• Mobile phones
• Emergency red phones in A&E, maternity, and cardiology departments

Please ensure this information is included in ward handovers. Staff should be made aware that patients will not be able to reach wards via the main hospital number during this time. Please provide alternative ward mobile numbers to patients and staff.

For colleagues needing direct numbers to particular areas and departments, please see direct numbers list for wards and areas.

Rest assured, this activity will be closely monitored by our IT support and telephony teams.

DoLS and MCA Training Sessions

We will be hosting a Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards (DoLS) and Mental Capacity Act (MCA) training sessions across the Trust.

The training is aimed at colleagues in patient facing roles. Also, Year 3 student nurses are welcome to join.

The training will include topics such as-

• The criteria of a DoLS.
• Who needs a DoLS.
• How to complete a DoLS form.
• Where a DoLS form is sent..

The training will also cover the Mental Health Act 2005 and flow charts on how to access and complete MCA and DoLS via Unity.

Dates

Wednesday 8 January

Wednesday 12 February

Time – 10am to 12pm

Venue – MMUH, Lift Core A, Level 4, Seminar Room ADM 422

To book please email- r.begum19@nhs.net

IT maintenance affecting Connect: 23 December, 2am – 6am

Please be aware an essential IT maintenance will be taking place on Monday 23 December to carry out security patching and reboots to ensure the Trust’s systems remains compliant. The work is scheduled to begin at 2am for approximately four hours and should be completed by 6am.

During this time the Connect Intranet site will be unavailable for up to 30 minutes.

Please be assured colleagues will be able utilise their direct connections to core applications such as iPM and Unity via desktop shortcuts at this time.

This timeslot has been chosen as a quieter time operationally.

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.

IT patching affecting printing services at Sandwell: 22 December, 2am – 6am

Please be aware essential IT Patching will be taking place on Wednesday 22 December to ensure the Trust’s printing server remains stable. The work is being carried out by IT and is scheduled to begin at 2am for approximately four hours and should be completed by 6am.

During this time, the following service will be unavailable for up to 30 minutes during the above time:

• Equitrac printing services at Sandwell – 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.

Note: 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.

Unity printing maintenance: 19 December, 10pm – 11pm

Please be aware essential Unity maintenance will be taking place on Thursday 19 December 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 19 December 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.

Christmas lunches available this week

Christmas lunches are available at SWB from 12pm – 2pm on the following dates at:

• MMUH Winter Garden Restaurant – Monday 16 December – Friday 20 December
• Sandwell Hallam Restaurant – Wednesday 18 December – Thursday 19 December
• Rowley Coffee Pot – Wednesday 18 December – Thursday 19 December

No pre-paid tickets required.

For more information please contact michael.best@nhs.net

Student Nursing Associate Recruitment

Are you interested in being a Nursing Associate? or do you have a passion for healthcare?

If yes, this role is for you!

You will need-

• Evidence of achieving the required numeracy and literacy standard Functional skills level 2 Math and English or GCSE at C/4 or above.
• Confirmation of support from your line manager.
• Contracted to work a minimum of 30 hours per week.
• 6 months of healthcare experience.

BCU intake is May 2025.

For more information contact the Nursing Associate Team on ext 6149.

For further details email – swbh.nursingassociates@nhs.net 

Applications forms need to be completed by Sunday 12 January.

Removing telephone call handovers from the patient transfer process

To support our commitment to provide high quality care to our patients, one of our strategic objectives is for no patient to remain in hospital longer than is needed for their condition.

As we move further into winter and demand on services increases, many of our patients have long waits in ED whilst waiting for transfer to assessment areas, which means we are unable to support timely offloading of ambulances.

To support a reduction in the time taken, we have decided to remove telephone call handovers from the transfer process. We are also working on early transfers of patients by introducing a “Your Next Patient” approach. Telephone call handovers for transfers for Medicine Group specialities have now stopped.

Once this is established, we will look to remove telephone call handovers in other areas.

Be sure to check out this video featuring Mel Roberts, Chief Nursing Officer talking about removing telephone call handovers from the transfer process.

If you need additional support or have any issues, please contact your line manager.

Friday Message from Rachel Barlow – Friday 13 December

Dear colleagues,

We have reached the end of another busy week – time always seems to go quicker in the run up to Christmas doesn’t it?  It’s wonderful seeing our sites in all their festive glory – thank you for ensuring that your decorations are in line with our IPC and fire safety policies.  Today marks the start of our 12 days of Christmas celebrations – from hot chocolates in the Winter Garden, to Christmas dinners being served in our catering outlets – it really is the most wonderful time of the year – find out more about what’s happening here.

My week began with working a ‘back to the floor’ shift with the critical care team – thank you to colleagues for making me feel so welcome and giving me a fascinating insight into your working day.

Some of you will probably know that I started my NHS career as a nurse, which included working in critical care, so it was special for me to be able to take a trip down memory lane and experience both technical innovations and experience the design and new spaces in Midland Met. Being shown how the electronic patient record interfaces with all the technical equipment was fascinating, particularly when I compare back to the old days of paper charts and coloured pens!  The standardised care plans gave me a flashback to my first days at St Thomas’s ICU, where every morning we would hand write a personalised care plan for our patient.

I spoke to colleagues who told me how much they loved their jobs, particularly working as one big team in a beautiful new environment and I also spoke to relatives who had nothing but praise for our staff. I was particularly pleased to hear their feedback about the on-site relatives’ accommodation, something which we didn’t have previously at Sandwell and City. Facilities like this make a difficult family experience just that little bit easier to deal with and is part of what makes Midland Met #MoreThanAHospital.

Crucial to Midland Met being successful, is our ‘community first’ ethos. Our community teams deliver additional services to care for more people within their own homes, which allowed us to fit into the bed base within Midland Met.  This drive and flexibility will continue this winter, with both existing services enhanced, and additional services developed. For example, community colleagues have not only opened additional winter beds at Rowley Regis Hospital as part of our Winter Plan, they are also working with the Dudley Group to open stroke rehab beds on site at Rowley, which will improve the rehabilitation care patients receive and also enable faster acute hospital discharges.

Our new Urgent Treatment Centre model at Sandwell Health Campus and Urgent Primary Care Service at Midland Met are now seeing 22 per cent more patients than this time last year – ensuring patients receive the right care in the right place and helping reduce the number of people within our Emergency Department.

In addition, our health and care partners in Sandwell and West Birmingham continue to work with us to support the ‘community first’ ethos. In Sandwell, the winter Acute Respiratory Illness (ARI) service is now open, with hubs operating from several locations across the borough. Patients will be able to access the services via their GP and it is operating 7 days a week, again helping to reduce the need to attend ED or a UTC.

Our community teams are an essential part of our SWB Family, and we will be focusing our communications our community services and Sandwell and City Health Campuses in the New Year.

On Wednesday, I was proud to join a range of colleagues at a very special celebration. We were honoured to be awarded the Freedom of the Borough by Sandwell Council. This has been given to the Trust in recognition of the work we have done to serve and care for our local community, including our response to the COVID-19 pandemic and the opening of Midland Met.

It is the highest honour that a council can bestow on a local people and is for every member of staff.  In the New Year we will tour the Freedom of the Borough Award and Certificate across our sites, in recognition of your brilliant work, dedication and resilience. You all make such a positive impact on improving the lives of our local community – this award is for all our staff and is thoroughly deserved.

Thank you for everything you do – I am so proud of this organisation, and everything we have achieved, and I hope you are too.

Have a wonderful weekend.

Rachel.