Chief Executive’s Message – Friday 24 January
January 24, 2020
Another week and another Star. Hot off the heels of Caroline Ndachangedzwa last week, this week’s winner is Nikki Smith.
Last weekend, I enjoyed giving a little help to our latest recruitment event, held in the Birmingham Treatment Centre. Most areas of nursing were represented in the market-place trying to persuade attendees to pick them. There were some smart ideas about how to get people to choose us – driving lessons for district nurses for instance, and better language qualification support for registered nurses from abroad working here as HCAs. In fact the majority of people who came along to the event were looking to join us as HCAs, or as new nursing associates. The Trust is determined to create a simple nursing ladder, or escalator, that moves people from band 2 to band 3 based on their skills against our checklist, and supports people to join the associate programme, where we have room for 150 enrolees. During February we will launch some video material explaining this approach and busting a few myths and rumours in the process. I really hope we end March 2020 with fewer than 600 vacancies in all disciplines and roles here, having started the year above 1,100. Not where we want to be, but huge progress made.
Of course the implication of driving down vacancies and improving recruitment, tackling turnover and retention is twofold: First it helps us to address agency spend – we will end March having spent about £16m through agencies. Some of that went to people who worked a shift but around 25% will have gone into overhead. We have not regressed to Thornberry but we still have room to improve. And second with better staffing comes time to train. The Clinical Leadership Executive on Tuesday explored ideas about how we ensure that we roster training time, as well as time to do the kind of improvement roles as practitioners and champions that many staff want to take within their department or ward. Time to learn is definitely something we want to be better at structuring and funding than in the past, and to stand out from other NHS organisations for getting this right.
Quality Improvement Half Days remain our biggest investment in learning right now. In 2020-2021 some deliberately coincide with primary care’s Protected Learning Time locally. The dates are out now – (2020-21 QIHD Dates). Once again we decided that mornings and afternoons make sense, and avoided Mondays. These decisions can never please everyone but well over 1,500 people continue to use this valuable four hours to talk through how to improve services for patients and for one another. For clinical leaders and senior managers First Friday will also re-start in March – look out for details in coming weeks in the communications bulletin and here. This is our chance to make sure we look-see-listen. No need to publish a schedule. It’s the first Friday each month.
Car parking remains the largest single ‘postbag’ issue I see. I know that you know we are spending £10m to get this right. But in the meantime worth highlighting that free parking is available at New Square a few moments’ walk from Sandwell. We cannot guarantee you a parking space on any site. That is why we have invested in public transport alternatives, the car share app, and more inter site shuttles to help manage in-day travel when spaces are rarely available. We do listen, so we are looking at the late shift car park hours at City, and making sure we create something similar at Sandwell. But if you do get a Parking Charge Notice (PCN) please pay it, or use the staff-led appeals process. Publicity or letters to me will make no difference to that process, which just looks at whether you have a case for being unfairly treated. Sadly if you do not pay your PCN, and have no valid appeal, in turn your car park access will be given to someone else.
When talking to local people about Midland Met, car parking often comes up. We will need to work hard to make sure neighbouring streets are not ours to park in. Of course, the bus routes into the site will help, and I am pleased there are refurbishment plans for Rolfe Street too. You may or may not know that the local canal very much connects key places in our patch; as a walk-way, a cycle path, and potentially as a space for water taxis. The Canal and Rivers Trust are working with us, given the lack of locks between the city centre and Smethwick, and the chance to re-develop the water’s edge from the new hospital down to the towpaths. All of this comes hot on the heels of the city’s radical Transport Plan for Birmingham. That confirms the introduction of the Clean Air Zone, or CAZ and introduces further proposals. Heartbeat in February will give you a summary of what is expected to happen.
From February we will be moving away from paper payslips. Only about 300 of us now do not have a used ESR log-in and all of us can access those services on our mobiles, tablets or on PCs. A lot of work has gone into these changes, and I would urge you take any final steps that you need to in order to be ready. Heartbeat will continue to be printed, although a e-copy is also available. It will work really well on myConnect which you can sign up to on Google Play or the Apple App Store– just search for SWBH myConnect. That way you also get nudges for key stories and things you might be interested in going on around our Trust.
Finally, a plug for this month’s TeamTalk. Among other issues we are trying to finalise that list of changes made in our care over the last few months because of patient feedback. The change where you work is probably a big deal for your patients, so let’s make sure it joins our roll of honour as we look to celebrate at least 50 adaptations made based on complaints, compliments, friends and family advice and so on.
#hellomynameisToby