Chief Executive’s Message – Friday 11 May

May 11, 2018

Rachel Barlow, Chief Operating Officer. Toby Lewis is away.

This week we have been celebrating Nurses’ Day, an opportunity to recognise the contribution of our nursing colleagues to patient care and experience and reflect on how nursing roles have developed over time. As a former nurse, I know just how central the nursing profession is to everything we do here and what really makes the difference is the way at our Trust we are learning to work across perceived professional boundaries to provide truly multi professional, integrated care.

Our new chief nurse, Paula Gardner, was at the forefront of our celebrations this week and in this short film at the top of my message you can hear Paula’s views on Nurses’ Day as well as her first impressions of our Trust. Paula has been out and about over the past few weeks meeting as many colleagues as possible and if you have not yet had the chance to meet her do come along to a couple of sessions taking place during May – open to all colleagues. Details here

The first of Paula’s meet and greet sessions is taking place on Wednesday 16 May which is our second Speak Up Day. Paula will be talking about her own experiences of speaking up in other organisations. Like the first Speak Up Day we held in September we want to use the day to raise awareness of the different ways that you can raise a concern about safety at work. These include speaking to your manager, raising an incident, talking to a Trade Union colleague or one of our nine Freedom to Speak Up Guardians. On Wednesday our Guardians will be out hosting awareness stands at Rowley, Sandwell and City and holding confidential “surgeries”  – a great opportunity to speak to a Guardian about a concern you may have but you’re not quite sure what to do about it. The Guardians are there to help you, so please take that opportunity.

We’d also like you to fill in a short survey so we can assess how willing our Trust appears to be at listening to, and resolving, concerns. Thank you in advance for you involvement in Wednesday’s activities.

At the Trust Board last week we were privileged to hear the story of the partner of someone who was struggling with alcoholism and who was greatly supported by Sally Bradberry and the alcohol team. The patient’s family were overwhelmed by the treatment and care that was provided and certain that this Trust’s actions had not saved her partners life but enabled her partner to successfully work full time and enhanced the quality of their family life. As well as the praise and thanks the service received, it was hard to hear about her experiences of trying to get the help that her family needed, much of which is delivered by and with other partners. As a Board we committed to accelerating our discussions with partners about these services so that we can better support our patients and their families in these difficult circumstances. It is only by cutting through these organisational boundaries, much as we are doing with professional boundaries, that we will be able to provide truly integrated care.

As the weekend approaches we continue to address the needs of the patients we expect to be admitted and whether we have the right beds available for them. Over the last bank holiday weekend we were able to keep patients largely in the right place to receive the best care without the need to care for patients in “extra” beds.  Importantly through work led by Claire Hubbard Director of Nursing for Medicine with clinical teams and the capacity team, we are becoming much better at admitting patients to the right beds to be cared for by the most appropriate clinical ward team and each week look at that data to ensure we can sustain that improvement.  This week has been busy after the bank holiday and as we prepare for the weekend. I want to thank all the colleagues who have worked hard to discharge patients safely when needed and for the work over the weekend and into next week to ensure that we continue to provide safe care in the right place.

A big part of our ability to provide safe care is in ensuring we have the substantive teams in place – huge improvements have been made on that front, particularly in filling nursing vacancies. I was delighted that the recruitment efforts of nursing and HR colleagues were recognised by NHS Improvement this week in the new bulletins – we are truly leading the way in this area – there is more to do but we are showing that we can make a difference and other Trusts are learning from our approach.

Thank you to all our nurses this weekend! Enjoy Nurses’ Day on 12 May and do share your stories #ThisNurse

#hellomynameis….Rachel