Chief Executive’s Message – Friday 18 October

October 18, 2019

Mandatory training is not everyone’s idea of an enticing way to begin my weekly message. I want to congratulate colleagues across our estates teams for currently leading the way with their levels of compliance (92 per cent) with our core 11 mandatory or statutory training obligations. In January 2020 some of those obligations change in frequency, and you need to prepare now for that, and catch up this side of Christmas.

Mandatory Training List

Core mandatory training module	Frequency
Equality & Diversity	Every 3 years
Conflict Resolution Training	Every three years
Fire Safety	Every two years – new requirement
Health & Safety	Every 3 years
Infection Control: Level 1 & Level 2	Every year for clinical colleagues – new requirement Every three years for non-clinical colleagues
Data Security Awareness	Every year for all staff
Moving and Handling : Level 1 & Level 2	Level 1: every three years (non-patient handling) Level 2: every two years (patient handling) -includes a practical assessment
Resuscitation: Level 1; Level 2 & Level 3	BLS: All clinicians every year – includes a practical assessment. Higher levels as per role allocation.
Safeguarding Adults: Level 1; Level 2 & Level 3	All staff do level 1 every three years Level 2: every three years All clinicians 8a and above need to complete level 3 every three years – new requirement
Safeguarding Children: Level 1; Level 2 & Level 3	All staff do level 1 every three years Level 2: every three years – role-dependent Level 3: every three years – role-dependent
Prevent: Basic and Prevent Awareness	All staff every three years

I am not currently compliant with mandatory training and I know many of us are not. All of us now need to devote some time to logging on and getting compliant. The vast majority of our training can be done on–line, and with our WiFi fixed, and Pulse in place, there is no technical barrier to sorting out our training, although it is still worth taking a screen-shot of the confirmation on e-learning as it can disappear! Of course some of the training is properly essential and especially worthwhile. This time last year we had a big drive on Basic Life Support training – and earlier this week for Re-start a Heart Day our teams were out and about across local schools getting young people trained – a key skill that can help to keep someone alive in the street.

This time last week we held our wonderful annual Star Awards. As I outlined in a note to colleagues on Monday, this was a tremendous evening and chance to celebrate long service, new leaders, key skills and great team work. Heartbeat at the end of the month will give you a glimpse of the circus themed ceremony, and start the countdown for our 2020 awards. In the intervening 51 weeks, we will have a weekly Star of the Week in our Trust, so get nominating on Connect, and we will use my message here to let you know who has won from the start of November.

Recognition, and feeling valued, is a key part of our work on improving engagement, through our weconnect projects. I am pleased to able to confirm that yesterday we won two national awards: Our diabetes work won the Quality in Care award with particular credit to trainee doctor Margaret Adu-Baah and 4^th Year medical student Nicholas Hewetson, and we contributed to a Society of Public Health award for our collaboration with the local authority to tackle alcohol related harm. On 11 November our Pioneer Teams will again be surveyed to see what difference has come from the work done in those teams, like City ED, and IT, the breast team, and health visiting. Nominations are open now for the second wave of Pioneer Teams, who get support with the coaching skills and peer involvement in trying to build involvement and engagement at a local level. Meanwhile, at a Trust level the anonymous national staff survey is out, and if you have not filled it in, I suspect you will be getting routine e-reminders from the national team. The survey is anonymous, but it compares our Trust’s weaknesses and strengths to others, through your voice and opinions. Please do try and find a few minutes to complete it.

As the weather has drawn in, I have more notes from people about both our smokefree policy, and our car parking situation. The planning applications for the new car parks at City and at Sandwell are due in very shortly. Meanwhile, we continue to look to enforce our parking rules on our sites for the benefit of everyone. There is more we can do to make sure a night shift car park is created at Sandwell and to support community staff, who sometimes need to park briefly at a hospital. However, there is no reason anyone needs to park on side streets or in residents’ driveways! With the changes to Lower Lyndon to help us build our GP practice, one of our smoking “hideouts” has closed at the top of grass verge. That leaves outside ED at Sandwell and the maternity building at City as our remaining targets to really deliver on our smokefree commitment. I would ask for your full support in tackling smokers there, and I know our security teams and wardens are redoubling our efforts. New cameras and physical barriers will go in. If we can we would want to avoid a surfeit of fines and penalties, but during November if need be we will ramp up those efforts as the Trust Board is entirely serious about enforcing this ban. Worth gently reminding you that any employee getting three smoking fines will be subject to conduct proceedings under our disciplinary procedure, in which video footage is admissible; we are proudly a smokefree Trust.

Today I chaired our latest digital committee, a month on from Unity Go-Live. When we compare our use of the new system to other Cerner using Trusts in the NHS, there are some really positive indicators for how we are getting to grips with the system. But there are also some indicators where other Trusts are using the system better. As we go through November we will publish that data at directorate and team level, sharing individual employee data from December. If you want to know more about Unity and to use it better, vast quantities of advice, guides and videos are on Connect. A super user works near you who can guide you too. And through 4050 you can access IT trainers and experts in Unity as well. We want to work together to improve our use of the system, for all the positives that it has already brought. I am excited too to hear of our progress in replacing the current PACs system, and introducing the AI technology into radiology that would put the Trust at the absolute forefront of the UK in our collaboration with IBM Watson. As we move, slowly, but surely, towards Midland Met the profile we are achieving means that leading partners in healthcare want to work with us to test, to implement and to innovate.

Sadly, I am ending this message with the news that one of our colleagues, Claire Millward, passed away this week. I did not know Claire personally, but have heard from colleagues in the stroke service how devastating this unexpected news is, and what an impact Claire made on our services during her time with us as an HCA.

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