Chief Executive’s Message – Friday 17 May
May 17, 2019
Congratulations to Fran Silcocks and Janice Nelson, both of whom have won national awards in the last forty eight hours. Fran scooped yet another sustainability award for the Trust, focused on transport, even before we try and move our vehicles to an electric setting, as well as being noted as highly commended in the staff engagement category. Janice used to work in our Improvement Team and is now driving clinical procurement as part of the Black Country Procurement service that we co-own – her award was for best NHS procurement champion. It is, of course, now award season, and there is time to get your nominees in for our Star Awards!
International nurses’ day marked a fantastic chance to celebrate, listen to and think about the future of nursing in our Trust. It is encouraging that we are leading the way with our accelerator programme to help develop nurses more quickly into senior clinical expert roles, whether that is at band 6, or in critical care, or, in due course in infection control or other specialist areas. I want to reiterate our commitment to extend the accelerator concept to bands 2 and 3, so that from October we will create one pay scale in our Trust where those who have the extended skills to work at a band 3 level will be able to do so. This is part of a vision owned by the whole Board to support individuals moving from HCA roles into senior nurse roles, whilst expanding HCA numbers in our Trust to recognise the huge caring contribution made by our colleagues. Despite the quadrupling of training spend, I know that some people are still excluded from career development, or have a sense that promotion follows a ‘face fits’ model. I will continue to work with Chris Rickards, and other staff voices, until we have addressed decisively that perception, by making it not simply straightforward to take forward your career but rewarding too. And yes, next year we will have a corporate celebration for our theatre practitioners on national ODP day!
I hope you share my pride at the work done here over the last three years or more to improve end of life care in our community. Our services are rated as Outstanding by the Care Quality Commission, and even more importantly by our patients. The Day Hospice at Rowley Regis goes from strength to strength. So these last few days marked national Dying Matters Awareness Week, and we had exhibitions and other events going on. The next step is to integrate our work with that of primary care colleagues, making sure that choices made outside our walls come with our patients, and those decided here travel onward too. Over 80% of our patients die now in a place that they have chosen, and we want to work to improve that further. Recognising the wishes and feelings of the patients we look after, and helping families to address these choices with compassion and decency. The events this week underscore that this is something that is everyone’s work across our organisation.
Ramadhan continues, and I again want to thank those observing their fast and devotions, whilst working here and caring for our patients. Richard Samuda’s Iftar took place on Wednesday at City, and was a wonderful opportunity for families, staff, and patients to come together and share fellowship and some fantastic food too. Our Muslim Liaison Group has truly helped to influence how the Trust works and is led, and has also I know given a voice and a place to many who felt ignored.
On Wednesday next (22nd) we have both our Women in Leadership event, led by deputy medical director Sarb Clare, and the celebration day for our new Clinical Research Facility, working Trustwide but based at Sandwell in outpatients – overseen by Kath Gill, our research director. It is possible to be involved in both! Over half of our executive happen to be women, and the Board as a whole is committed to ensuring that no-one is excluded from senior roles. It is simply true that a gender pay gap remains and we are working through what we need to do to better address that over the next three years. The actions we have taken to change the ethnic diversity of our senior leadership roles above band 8 have shown change can happen. But seniority in our Trust should not only or solely mean leadership or management positions. That is why research excellence and expertise is highly prized here, and I think having won awards for our research improvements since 2014, the new facility gives us the chance to take the next step. Commercial trials will sit now more clearly alongside NIHR trials in our emphasis, and that should allow specialties like paediatrics, radiology, therapies and others to play a bigger role alongside some of our traditional leading lights like ophthalmology and rheumatology.
I have sought to avoid recent messages being dominated by Brexit, our IT, or even Midland Met. Each march on. There is more to do on the new hospital, and we are working hard to finalise commercial terms with Balfour Beatty. The case goes back to our Trust’s Board in a fortnight en route to HM Treasury this summer. We remain on track to have the hospital open before the Commonwealth Games: A worthwhile race. Meanwhile competition is hotting up in our 28-day challenge. You can get onto the play domain, there are prizes sitting behind the scratch card days (even Thoughtful Thursday…..and definitely Singing Sunday), and we will soon be asking everyone to confirm their competency against the 11 key standards agreed by our clinical informatics leaders. So please do not be a bystander in this important set of summer changes. Unity is almost with us at long last, after multiple deadline extensions, and it will certainly be hard work but worth it.
Attached are this week’s IT stats: IT Performance Stats 17 May 2019
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