Chief Executive’s Message – Friday 10 July
July 10, 2020
David Carruthers, Medical Director
Toby is away
Sunday was a special day, when we saw the NHS celebrated nationally for providing free healthcare at point of use to our communities for 72 years. As we joined in the celebrations, this year was all about thanking our communities for their support to the NHS during the pandemic. You will have seen on social media photos of our sites (City, Leasowes, Rowley and Sandwell) lit up in blue. I am grateful to those of you who put a light in your windows to say thank you to all those who have stood with us.
With the further easing of lockdown this past weekend and social distancing measures, it is now more important than ever to ensure we do not relax our approach to COVID-19. We have all worked so hard to offer patients the best we can under challenging circumstances. We must continue to maintain our handwashing, mask wearing, good use of PPE and social distancing (in our workplace we will continue to observe the 2m social distancing rule).
As we continue to play our part in finding out more about COVID-19, I’m pleased that our research and development team have announced the launch of the SIREN study. It aims to determine if previous COVID-19 infection in healthcare workers confers future immunity from having the infection again. It will also look at any new infection and therefore will involve both repeat swab and the antibody blood test every two weeks on average (variable from 1 to 4 weekly sampling), for one year. Dr Masood Aga, Consultant and Specialty Lead in Occupational Medicine is leading the study, please consider whether you can help and contact the team for more information.
Tackling COVID-19 means ensuring that we are doing all we can to keep you safe at work. Over the past week you will have received an email from occupational health asking you to complete your risk assessment. Over 2,000 have now done this – thank you. If you haven’t already done so, I would urge you to do so as soon as possible. Your response will help us to assess your level of risk and enable managers to be provided with the actions they are required to take to keep you safe at work. Follow this link to complete the form COVID Risk Assessment Form
Your health and wellbeing remains a significant part of our offer as we fight COVID-19. I do encourage you to take advantage of the services we have on offer. See Connect for further details and take that first step to look after your wellbeing.
At Public Health & Equality Committee this week we discussed the ‘countdown plan’ to launch the healthy weight element of our staff wellbeing programme. This is due to go live on 14 August, and over the coming weeks you will begin to see a preview of some of the exciting offers we will launch next month. Our wellbeing programme is part of our wider wellbeing strategy which aims to tackle the rising incidence of obesity in our locality. More information will continue to be shared in the communications bulletin, please get involved and share your views.
It was good see the Junior Doctors and Medical Students Common Room, finally open on Tuesday. The new area boasts comfy sofas, a kitchenette, and two rest rooms, which each house a reclining chair and black out blinds. There are lockers and two computers where colleagues are able to continue with any work they need to. This is a fantastic resource for our medical colleagues. Thank you to doctors Alison Eastaugh and Eoin Dore for coming up with the idea and seeing it to fruition.
Congratulations to Dr May Yan who has taken over as Clinical Specialty Lead for Acute Medicine. May’s immediate priority is to help the team ‘restore and recover’ to some normality, to identify useful changes and new ways of working from our COVID-19 experience and how to sustain them, and to also to focus on the team’s training, education and wellbeing. May will play a vital role in integrating our City and Sandwell acute medicine teams in preparation for our move into MMUH. She will also be responsible for building a medical and nursing workforce which is vital in delivering high quality acute care. I was delighted to see that the move to Midland Met was the main point of discussion at the acute medicine QIHD (this week) chaired by Dr Sarb Clare, Deputy Medical Director, Acute Physician. It’s great to see colleagues enthused and energetic about our move to the new hospital.
The July issue of Heartbeat is out this week electronically and in print form. You will have seen in this issue our response to Black Lives Matter by our Chairman, Richard Samuda. The movement has highlighted how far injustices can remain ingrained within societies and institutions across the UK. At SWB Black lives do matter, and we must make this true for our colleagues and our patients, who come to us for help with a healthcare need. We must engage, listen and respond. The BME Staff Network will be working with Raffaela Goodby, Director of People and Organisation Development and other colleagues to do just that starting next week at the staff network meeting on Wednesday 15 July. The meeting will run from 12pm – 1.45pm in postgraduate dining room at City Hospital or you can join via WebEx Meeting number (access code): 137 753 6100 Meeting password: xJbFXRER524. Please do attend or join in virtually to have your say on how we can continue to ensure that Black voices and BME voices are heard and influence positive change. If you are unable to make the meeting you can email questions or suggestions to Donna Mighty, Assistant Primary Care Liaison Manager and Chair of the BME Staff Network d.mighty@nhs.net
At this Trust we take pride in recognising our colleagues and teams who go the extra mile to provide quality care to our patients. That is true for our upcoming Star Awards. We received well over 700 nominations this year – nearly 200 more than last year. Thank you for taking the time to acknowledge your colleagues. Long listing will begin next week and the shortlist should be announced on Monday 3 August. Good luck!
Our Star of the Week is Practice Development Nurse and Clinical Nurse Practitioner, Catherine Morris. Cath was nominated by colleagues from across the Trust for her work in supporting staff, patients and families with end of life care. Described as ‘an incredible CNS’ by colleagues, Cath has demonstrated her unrivalled compassion, care and patience through the very challenging COVID-19 pandemic.
I was delighted to hear we won an Employers Network for Equality & Inclusion award for Community Impact and highly commended for Inclusive Recruitment. The great work has been achieved through our widening participation project team. This is excellent recognition for the Trust and further demonstrates our efforts in being a diverse and inclusive organisation.
Congratulations are also in order to the City ED team, who have been shortlisted for the HSJ Patient Safety Awards for Changing Culture. The team were part of Wave 1 of the weConnect Pioneer Teams Programme and implemented a number of initiatives that had a huge impact on culture and engagement. Due to COVID-19 we had to temporarily stop Wave 2 but are looking to restart the programme in the coming weeks.