Chief Executive’s Message – Friday 21 September
September 23, 2018
Thank you to our Freedom to Speak Up guardians, and many others, including all of our executive team, for manning the stands in our third Speak Up Day on Wednesday. We used the time in part to get your feedback on some big ideas which might help to make working in our Trust a little simpler or easier. The aim is to create more time for what really matters for our patients. You can still log on to vote in the poll. Your voice will drive where effort is targeted. In October the whole NHS is being asked to focus on speaking up as we strive to build a culture comfortable with raising concern, dissenting, and asking questions. From the data I see in anonymised form most people who work in our Trust do have confidence in the systems, including SafeCall our completely confidential whistleblowing line – which reports to our independent Audit Chair. I think we are well on the way to a speak up culture. I do though agree with a colleague who wondered whether it feels like a listening culture, that truly hears. We will reflect on that as a Board and I would invite all senior leaders to do the same.
Martin Sadler joined us this week to take over the role of Chief Informatics Officer from Mark Reynolds. Martin has a background leading large IT departments and turnaround projects. We all recognise that the prolonged IT resilience issues we have faced merit that expertise. Just as sepsis is our number one quality priority, I would suggest that IT stability is our number one safety priority. Work on WiFi and on device connectivity continues, we have had outages in neurophysiology and cardiac investigations. I attach this week’s IT stats – we continue to monitor this closely. There is big money and a big plan, and by investing in more permanent IT staff and leadership capacity, we want to meet the challenge we face. Thank you to everyone who has taken part in the dress rehearsal for Unity this week, and as ever please get yourself enrolled for Unity training after which you can access the play system.
The promised late summer sun seems elusive and winter seems to be coming fast. We open winter beds in ten days’ time and a focus on making sure we have staffing right continues. It will be important to deploy people where they are most needed, and to manage rotas and rosters consistently well. Looking back on August and September we faced some staffing issues with poor sequencing of annual leave, and slow recruitment or time to fill. Of course we need to also take smart account of acuity and need, and again make sure we apply consistently the various tools we have to access what our patients need. In coming weeks there will be what may feel like overwhelming scrutiny of rotas and rosters against that intention and I want to assure that it is patient need that comes first. By keeping control of our money we can invest, as we have done in neonatal staffing, and so there is no conflict between a focus on staffing numbers and the cost of our workforce. I would particularly draw your attention to our NHS leading mental health and wellbeing services for staff and managers. Whatever the season working in care is a source of strain as well as a privilege and we need to do all we can to support people, flexibly and fairly.
If you are worried about staffing where you work, you can raise that concern in all sorts of ways. But please feel absolutely encouraged to contact me directly and I will make arrangements for your concerns to be explored and acted on. I cannot promise we will always agree on staffing needs and sometimes that is interpreted as ignoring the issue, when in fact it is respectful disagreement. What I can commit to is that we will not ignore the concerns you raise. Do not let anyone tell you it is not worth speaking up because no one listens or we cannot afford it. This week I have had more than twice as many discussions that led to investing in extra staffing, as any held about workforce redesign or reductions. And a paper on long term workforce investments for 2019 goes to our Board the week after next.
The CQC continue to visit us. So far they have been to BMEC, A&E, Leasowes, our medical and childrens’ wards, critical care at Sandwell, Rowley Regis, maternity and neonates. As always there is room for improvement, but I know a lot of people have taken the time to get across changes made since 2017, areas of excellence and endeavour, and some of the challenges you face and issues you perceive. In October the visit team will return to meet senior leaders and explore what they have found and how the organisation manages choices, risks, priorities and safety. I very much hope that any issues you have raised already feature on risk registers or in incident reporting, because the regulatory regime is fundamentally about how we manage care and improve services. Those are our tools to start that process and every one needs to feel able to use them to get across your ideas.
A fantastic response during August to the latest Your Voice survey. Over 1,000 colleagues contributed their opinions and thoughts. A special mention to colleagues in Imaging who filled in the survey in bigger numbers than ever before. In coming days we will highlight the changes we want to make as a result, as we move towards the NHS wide staff survey in October. Encouragingly the level of engagement reported in the survey has risen and we have got back to the NHS norm. But our aim is excellence and so we will see much much more work, both at Trust and team level, to make it easier to influence and implement your ideas for change.
Next month sees the launch of Black History Month across our organisation. On Monday 1 October, the Windrush exhibition – Here To Stay – transfers to our sites from its current home in the Medicine Cafe on New Street. You may remember that this fantastic photographic record showcases nurses and others from the Caribbean community or Windrush background who have served and still serve our NHS. The exhibition has local faces with a national message, and exhibited first in central London. Our Black and Minority Ethnic staff network should be proud of this work and their advocacy to do ever more to make sure we have fairness in our workplace and a just culture on how we celebrate and promote the strength that comes from our diversity.
Finally, we have appointed Balfour Beatty to undertake the interim construction contract in Midland Met. They will start on site in November to complete the six month contract which includes weather proofing and other remediation. A separate competition to find the final contractor is underway, but I am delighted to see Balfour selected, and by the healthy competition that the contract produced. It shows that the project is one the industry wants to work and our Trust is one they want to work with.