Monthly archives: December 2024

Can you spot the elf on the shelf?

It’s our first Christmas at Midland Met and we’ve found a mischievous elf who has been busy helping in 10 departments around the hospital. Can you guess where he’s been making mischief?

Here’s how to enter:

• Guess where you think the elf has been working.
• Submit your answers (1-10) for a chance to win one of two vouchers worth £20 each. Email swbh.comms@nhs.net. 
• The competition runs from Monday, 9 December – Friday – 20 December. Winners will be announced on Monday, 23 December.

Click here for a full view of the poster above.

Look out: The Chief Elf is on the loose!

Calling all colleagues!

To welcome our first Christmas at Midland Met we’re hosting our very own Elf on the Shelf event.

Snap a selfie with our mischievous visitor who is on the loose in public areas and share your pics in the SWB Family Facebook page.

Let’s spread some Christmas cheer—one selfie at a time.

Two winners will be selected from the selfies posted in the SWB Family and two £20 vouchers are up for grabs.

Click here for a full view of the poster above.

Green Impact Awards

The Trust recently ran the Green Impact Awards yesterday to showcase all of the great sustainability work by teams across the organisation. The teams completed actions in our Green Impact toolkit over the last year, like turning off lights and equipment when not required, wasting less, travelling by bus, bike, car sharing, using less single-use items, getting outdoors and much more!

The next cohort of the programme will commence in 2025, so if you would like to take part please get in contact if you wish to find out more and join.

It’s a great chance to take small, simple actions that collectively make a huge positive impact on our planet, our costs and patient care.

Click here to find out more about Green Impact.

Are you interested in gaining professional registration as a nurse?

Birmingham City University have a BSc (Hons) in Adult Nursing Course available. The course will give you the clinical skills and experience you need to become a registered nurse.

With a range of placement experiences and state-of-the-art simulation facilities, the course focuses on building your practical and personal skills so that you will be a highly effective future nurse.

To find out more click here.

NHS Mail: Account Secret Migration

NHSmail have been working with organisations to roll out Account Secret across all users to boost the security and safety of your account.

All users will be asked to create an ‘account secret’ via the self-service section in the NHS.net connect portal. This feature will replace the previous security questions and answers functionality.

The user Account Secret will be used by NHS. and local IT helpdesk agents to verify your identity in certain scenarios. For example, if you need to contact your local administrator to unlock your account or to reset your password on your behalf.

Upgrading to Account Secret safeguards your personal data and strengthens security across the NHS.

Benefits of setting up an Account Secret

• Protects user accounts with a stronger security measure than previous security questions
• Simplifies the log in process if you are locked out of your account
• Reduces Risk of accounts being hacked
• User friendly compared to previous security questions
• Secures data to latest data security standards

How to set it up:

You can easily set up your Account Secret through the NHS.net Portal Self-Service option, please refer to the below NHS Support site which outlines the process for you: Setting a User Account Secret.

Note: If you have not set up your Account Secret by Monday 31 March you will be asked to do so when you login into the NHS.net Portal. You will not be able to access portal services until you set up the Account Secret.

Our IT service desk are on hand to support you if you have any further questions regarding account migration, please contact them via teams or ext. 4050

Unity Printing Maintenance on Tuesday 10 December from 10pm to 11pm

Please be aware essential Unity maintenance will be taking place on Tuesday 10 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 10:05pm on Tuesday 10 December Unity printing will be briefly unavailable at the following site locations:

• Sandwell Outpatients
• Rowley Regis Hospital
• Leasowes Immediate Care Centre

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

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.

Are you an AHP from a BAME or ethnically diverse background in AFC pay scales 6-8c?

Do you have future aspirations to progress into a senior allied health professional role? Would you benefit from leadership development to support your career development and future aspirations?

If the answer is yes, the Ethnic Minority Allied Health Professional Leadership Programme aims to provide holistic, bespoke professional leadership support for aspiring ethnic minority allied health professionals with aspirations to progress to a senior leadership role.

The 12-month programme is aligned to the current national and regional priorities from the NHS Long Term Plan, NHS People Plan, Chief AHP BAME Strategic Advisory Group and the NHS EDI Improvement Plan.

The programme will include the following activities for Allied Health Professionals related to the following topics:

•Understanding your leadership style
•Board leadership and political awareness
•Clinical Governance Quality and Safety
•Communicating and presenting with impact
•Leading beyond boundaries
•Leading with authenticity as an ethnically diverse leader
•Career management
•Action Learning Sets
•Group coaching

The programme will combine online leadership modules from the NHS Leadership Academy with other activities including – group coaching, action learning sets, sponsorship, self-reflection and career management.

Applications are open from Tuesday 3 December to Wednesday 8 December 12pm, all modules will be delivered virtually via MS Teams and participants must be able to attend all of the modules to successfully complete the programme and be awarded with a certificate of completion. Please read the information pack which provides further details about the programme. Completed applications should be emailed to bcicb.workforce@nhs.net no later than Wednesday 8 January 12pm.

AHP Ethnic Minority Leadership Programme Positive Action FAQs

AHP BAME Leadership programme Application Pack November 24

For further queries please contact Stuart.Milton@nhs.net or Sabrina.Richards2@nhs.net

Research and Development Training Opportunities

Delivering research at SWB.

The Research and Development department are running local training sessions offered to staff at the Trust who would like to take or are already taking part in research.

• GCP Consolidation – For if you are new to research and have completed the NIHR Online Introduction to GCP (or if you would like further face to face training after attending the virtual GCP course online).
• PI Essentials– For if you are a new PI with less than 12 months experience or would like to become a PI of a research study (this is highly recommended for all new PIs in the Trust).

All sessions are face-to-face and the team have the following dates available:

PI Essentials (for new PIs), Friday 17 January 2025, Sandwell Education Centre, 10am-12pm

GCP Consolidation, Thursday 27 February 2025, Sandwell Education Centre, 10am-1pm

PI Essentials (for new PIs), Friday 28 March 2025, Sandwell Education Centre, 10am-12pm

GCP Consolidation, Thursday 22nd May 2025, 10am-1pm

PI Essentials (for new PIs), Friday 27 June 2025, TBC, 10am-12pm

GCP Consolidation, Thursday 25 September 2025, TBC, 10am-1pm

PI Essentials (for new PIs), Friday 17 October 2025, TBC, 10am-12pm

GCP Consolidation, Thursday 27 November 2025, TBC, 10am-1pm

Please use this link https://forms.office.com/e/3rBXPHxmaU to book and the team will email to confirm your place.

Any questions please email swbh.randd.generic@nhs.net

Safeguard Update: Retrospective Incidents

As we have successfully moved our services into MMUH, Safeguard has been updated in its entirety to reflect the new service locations. These include new naming conventions across our new services at MMUH, Sandwell and City Health Campus.

From a corporate and clinical governance perspective there may be times for legitimate reasons for incidents to be submitted against the old departments such as Sandwell Health Campus and City Health Campus. This functionality will be facilitated by the relevant Governance Teams below for you to be able to do so, as these options to report against the old depts are now unavailable on Safeguard web interface.

If you need to retrospectively report an incident at a location/department which is no longer available on Safeguard, please contact the relevant teams below to assist you.

If the incident has come to light via a legal investigation (claims or inquests) please contact: Legal Services swb-tr.SWBH-Team-LegalServices@nhs.net

If the incident has come to light via SJR , Mortality or Learning from Deaths reviews, please contact: Clinical Effectiveness swbh.learningfromdeaths@nhs.net

If you have retrospectively noted a clinical incident that needs reporting, or has come to light as part of a patient safety investigation, please contact:

Patient Safety Team swbh.patientsafety@nhs.net

Share your best selfies with us!

The Chief Elf is on the loose at Midland Met. Keep your eyes peeled as they pop up in unexpected places around the hospital.

Snap a selfie with our mischievous visitor and share your pics in the SWB Family Facebook page.

Let’s spread some Christmas cheer—one selfie at a time.