Chief Executive’s Message – Friday 6 May

May 6, 2022

It’s great to recognise the work of all our midwifery colleagues this week as we celebrate International Day of the Midwife. Thank you for all you continue to do in supporting and caring for families right across our population. Maternity services continue to be under intense scrutiny. The work you do to keep women and babies safe, as well as support each other in delivering high standards of care, is greatly appreciated.

Next week we recognise our nursing colleagues during nurse’s week which is a further opportunity to thank individuals for their leadership, care, innovation and commitment as well as their support to multidisciplinary teams. It is only through effective collaborative working across all professional groups that we will be able to achieve our first strategic objective for Patients – to be good or outstanding in everything we do.

The week also coincides with Medicine and Emergency Care’s “Reset Week” which builds on the principles of a ‘perfect week’ and aims to reset standards in the Emergency Departments, wards and non-elective care services whilst reconfiguring to a new, more sustainable model. It is focused on ensuring that we get patient care right in our urgent and emergency care services and through to our wards with appropriate and timely discharge home. COVID-19 has had a huge impact on our usual processes for patient care and as we learn to live with coronavirus we need to revisit our previous standards to ensure we are focused once more on those things that really matter to patients, and to our provision of safe care.

During the Reset Week some business as usual commitments, non-essential meetings and reports will be paused alongside a planned reduction in elective activity to ensure that medical, nursing and operational support can be focussed on supporting discharges in outlier areas. Group triumvirate and senior leadership will be available on both sites to support with advice, guidance and escalations whilst the reset week progresses and the bed base is reconfigured. I know that everyone involved will enjoy being part of our reset week. It will no doubt expose some learning and areas for improvement. I am confident that patient experience will be better as a result.

It is also worth considering what else we need to reset as we live with COVID-19. Throughout the pandemic a number of different processes were established to support clinical teams in focusing on the most immediate needs of our patients. More than two years on, many of these processes will now revert back to business as usual including the line management activities that all managers are responsible for. Managers will need to make sure they are back on track with the basics of good management including budget management, recruitment, training & development and sickness absence. Our Trust has been really strong at those basics previously and next week is as good a time as any for those of us who are managers to reflect on what we need to do better at, as a manager of people.

Let’s make reset week a chance for all of us to consider how we move to the next stage of living with COVID-19, whatever our role within the organisation.

Richard Beeken