COVID-19 Bulletin: Thursday 14 May
May 14, 2020
This is our every-day bulletin. Please use this bulletin and cascade arrangements within care and corporate groups to guide your actions. Throughout May we are determined to reduce avoidable harm and death in the people we are taking care of. Kindness remains the guiding principle of all the actions in our work to tackle the virus – kindness in how we look after patients, visitors, and one another.
A number of staff have raised queries about use-by dates on some equipment. Tomorrow afternoon we will have completed our review of the Trust’s stock and practice and will issue a clear summary of the position, both for equipment we have purchased, and for equipment received from national supplies. Transparency is very important to us and we will be open with you. At time of writing we are very satisfied with the safety of the equipment we have.
Numbers not statistics: Today’s totals (Yesterday’s totals)
| Number of our patients confirmed with COVID-19 during the pandemic | Number of positive COVID-19 patients who have been discharged during the pandemic | Number of patients who have died in our hospitals who tested positive for COVID-19 during the pandemic | Number of patients entered by the Trust into a COVID-19 research trial to date | Number of COVID-19 positive patients who are inpatients with us today | Number of our staff absent due to ill-health or isolation today |
| 1169
(1152) |
767
(766) |
326
(322) |
112
(108) |
76
(64) |
538
(553) |
1. The Recharge Booth launched today!
The Recharge Booth is a ‘virtual’ space that allows you to come together with others, reflect, recharge, decompress, and join a safe and confidential discussion. The booth this week will be hosted by Richard Burnell and will focus on the feelings and emotions that are experienced during our daily work, rather than trying to find solutions.
The Recharge Booth will ‘open’ virtually and will run every Thursday at the same time (2pm). Each week we will be sharing different colleagues’ stories and experiences.
By joining the Recharge Booth, we hope that colleagues will feel better enabled to maintain their health and wellbeing, and that it helps to support resilience in both personal and working lives.
For more information please contact Richard Burnell on 07747 144874 or Claire Hubbard on 07866 004575. If you would like to be part of the Recharge Booth, drop an email to swbh.rechargebooth@nhs.net. A WebEx invite will be sent to your outlook diary, and you will simply need to click on the ‘join’ button to enter.
2. Sampling for COVID-19 – Changes to swabbing process
As the demand for COVID testing has increased, it has become evident that there are emerging issues with supplies of reagents in some laboratories. Therefore in an effort to ensure we are able to continue testing and reporting on COVID-19 results in a timely manner, we have decided today to move our COVID-19 testing to a new laboratory for a few days.
The new move means that we are no longer asking colleagues to use dry black swabs to take samples, but to move to using white oropharyngeal swab kits for the time being until supplies of reagent are restored.
Further details of the new process to take swabs is available in the attached poster. Please ensure this process is followed carefully as failure to do so will result in samples being rejected and discarded.
| Triple bagging swab samples for safety
Remember when you are bagging your swab sample, you must ensure the red topped bottle is first put in to a clear specimen bag, this should then be placed in to a clear zip lock bag and then finally packaged in to a blue specimen bag alongside any paperwork.
|
3. Red wards – the future plans
Since the start of the pandemic, we have organised our wards, and other areas, into red zones, and then wards, and blue wards. Recently we added lilac wards for patients who had been in a red environment but were not confidently Covid-free. From having over 250 covid patients our numbers have reduced by two thirds. There are of course other patients waiting for swab results, or who have a negative test but clinical judgement remains that that person is likely Covid+.
Over the next few days we will be moving to fewer red wards in the Trust, converting some of those beds to lilac spaces. We need to be ready to scale “back up”. We also need to determine future staffing arrangements both for red and non-red areas. Bear with us over the next 72 hours while we finish work to make those decisions on our ward structures from June to September.
4. Social distancing – Looking after your wellbeing
Social distancing doesn’t only apply when you are standing in the queue of a supermarket or getting your lunch, social distancing is now a way of life as we manage our response to COVID-19. Make sure this is observed whatever you are doing during this evening’s Clap for Carers.
Remember the two metre rule, whether you work in an office or a ward, you should be taking steps to limit close contact with colleagues, make good use of the available spaces and technologies we have available and keep yourself safe and well.
Next week the Trust starts work to examine our estate to make sure that office spaces and other communal areas comply fully with the guidance published yesterday by Government on safe working spaces.
5. Work from home – next steps
We held our webex today discussing future working from home patterns, to learn from those who have been working this way for a few weeks. Thank you to everyone who took part. Over 400 colleagues have filled out our survey on what has worked and not worked during lockdown and more than 250 took part today.
Toby Lewis confirmed that next steps now are in two phases:
- Revised WFH Guidance (v3) on May 27th to cover the period to the end of July 2020,
- and launch in June of our 2020-2023 working from home plans.
Look out for the revised guidance, and space to talk in Team Talk this month about some of the principles which will sit behind our longer term home working model. It is really important that we make it simple and rewarding to work from home, fair on those who do, and those who don’t – and we support people managing those who WFH. PDRs can be done by WebEx!
Adding to wider the range of mental health support available, our colleagues at the Black Country Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust have set up 24/7 mental health helpline. If you, or anyone you know within the region feels unable to cope and needs to speak to someone urgently you can do so by calling 0345 646 0827, pressing option 1 if you or they reside in Sandwell or Wolverhamption and option 2 for Dudley or Walsall.