Chief Executive’s Message – Friday 10 January

January 10, 2025

Dear colleagues,

Firstly, thank you for the warm welcome that I have received during my first week as chief executive here at Sandwell and West Birmingham. It’s been an insightful and inspiring week, and I am very pleased to have the opportunity to lead this organisation. As you know, I will continue in my position as CEO with The Dudley Group NHS Foundation Trust, and whilst it is exciting to be creating this collaboration between the two organisations, I remain clear that both Trusts have unique identities, challenges, and opportunities – and I will talk to you more about what I believe these to be and how I think we will address and achieve them together in a future Friday message.

Throughout the week, I have had the opportunity to meet a range of colleagues, and I am looking forward to meeting many more of you in the forthcoming weeks. What has struck me so far is what a friendly organisation this is, and I have already seen the Trust values in action, which is wonderful to see.

I have had a busy first week, including my first executive group meeting and the public and private Trust Board meetings which took place on Wednesday. It’s clear from what I heard during Board, that 2024 was a successful year for the Trust, both in terms of our urgent and emergency care (quite clearly with the opening of Midland Met), but also within our planned and community services too. It is right that we have celebrate these successes (which we will do at the forthcoming Star Awards in March – more on that later), but we now need to ensure that we focus on 2025 – there is lots of work still to be done to really embed some of the changes that happened during the last year.

I discussed yesterday that I am keen to increase the presence of my executive colleagues and our non-executive directors across all our sites, so they can get more of a sense of how it feels on the shop floor. So, if you see us about, please do make conversation, ask questions, feedback and let us know how it feels to be part of SWB. Another important way that you can provide this information is by completing the Pulse Survey, which is open until the end of January.

I have always been incredibly passionate about just how important the staff surveys are. They play an important role in helping us to understand your experiences at work, your concerns and identifies areas that we need to focus on improving. Historically, the response rate at Sandwell and West Birmingham has been lower than the regional average – however I do know that this improved during 2024, as has the staff engagement score, which is calculated by what you say in both the Quarterly Pulse Survey and the annual National NHS Staff Survey.

Please do take the time to complete it, it will only take five minutes of your time – but the content is invaluable to me and the Trust leadership team, and I can assure you that we will act and make changes because of your feedback.

The link to complete the survey is below:

https://picker.fra1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_b8cMes96Xg3Nk1g?&Trust%20Code=RXK

As you may have seen in the media, urgent and emergency care services are across the NHS are currently under severe pressure. The first week of January is always incredibly busy, due to things such as the spread of infections like covid and flu following Christmas and New Year gatherings, children returning to school, the cold weather we have been experiencing and the peak of the flu season.

I am incredibly proud of how colleagues working throughout the trust including our urgent and emergency care services have been coping with this level of pressure, particularly at the same time as implementing the new 45-minute ambulance handover, which started on Monday. So far, we have seen good days and some more challenging days. We have work to do to properly implement the correct push and pull methods from our emergency department into the right specialty pathway, but if we continue with the teamwork I have heard about this week, I know will be moving in the right direction. Please remember that this is a Trust wide initiative – we all play a part – not only those working within ED.

We are also managing flu and other respiratory infections well – and this is due to you identifying symptoms early and taking steps to isolate patients in side rooms and isolation areas as quickly as possible. I heard yesterday that had we had this amount of flu cases at City Hospital, we would have had to close wards – another early benefit we are seeing of Midland Met. Please continue to exercise excellent infection control standards – and if you haven’t yet had your winter vaccines – I would encourage you to get these as soon as possible.

Finally, as I mentioned earlier, the Star Awards will take place on Friday 14 March – I had the pleasure of attending the awards in 2023 as a guest and I thought it was an incredible event – and I know this year promises to be even better. There are people and teams across this whole organisation who have really gone above and beyond and who consistently live our Trust values through everything they do – so if this sounds like someone you work with, or someone you line manager, do put them forward to a Star Award.

The nomination process is simple, and the communications team can assist you if required – you can contact them on swbh.comms@nhs.net

The link to submit your nominations is below – they will close on 31 January.

https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/SA-25

I wish you all a wonderful weekend and look forward to meeting many more of you soon.

Kind regards,

Diane