Chief Executive’s Message – Friday 18 September
September 18, 2020
Clearly we are in our first week of increased restrictions both across the country and locally in Birmingham and Sandwell. I would echo what local authority leaders, public health directors and clinicians are assertively stating. We are seeing more cases in our communities as well as in our hospitals and these increases are serious and concerning. I want to be absolutely clear that abiding by these restrictions is essential. We all need to comply and challenge others where they are not complying. Hard as it is to stay away from other households, we need to show an example as well as ensuring that we protect each other and our friends and family.
Thank you to everyone for all you are doing to rigorously follow our swabbing and infection control processes when caring for patients, and for abiding by our mask usage, PPE guidelines, handwashing and social distancing policies. These are as important now as ever so please maintain your vigilance and stay alert. Our redirooms are being piloted currently; they are temporary, single-patient isolation rooms to isolate infectious patients under contact or droplet precautions. These are designed to assist with reducing transmission of infections and I trust will be a help in our isolation capacity.
I know that many of us may be affected by household isolation. We described this in our COVID-19 bulletin this week. If a member of your household tests positive for COVID-19 please self-isolate and stay at home. If a member of your household is isolating but has no symptoms, for instance due to a school bubble closure, then you are not required to isolate yourself but I recognise that caring responsibilities will have an impact. If this affects you please alert your line manager as soon as possible so that we can best support you. Accommodation can be made available for you near to work to assist.
Our Flu-per Trooper flu campaign is getting into gear. Protecting ourselves and others from flu this year is vital and you all know the reasons why. We expect to receive our vaccinations in the next few weeks and the key priority now is to make sure your team and service has sufficient peer vaccinators. They are crucial in our fight against flu and will take responsibility to jab colleagues. Signing up and doing the training is straightforward so please make sure you do this.
Earlier in the week, we hosted the West Midlands Mayor, Andy Street, who was invited by St Basils to view the live and work scheme, which is a great partnership between the Trust and the national charity that supports young people who are at risk of homelessness. People on the scheme are able to be housed in our own accommodation on site at Sandwell and work as an apprentice within the Trust. You will have heard the stories from individuals who have excelled in these roles and continue to develop their careers within the Trust and the wider NHS. We are grateful for the support of the Mayor who has long been a supporter of our Trust’s commitment to development and learning and supporting people through employment. This is life-changing work and we can take pride in the holistic way our Trust addresses health and wellbeing, doing what we can to support people with housing and employment as well as their clinical care and treatment. Our strong partnerships right across Sandwell and Birmingham are testament to that.
On Monday 21 September we celebrate Unity’s first birthday. I am sure that you, like me, cannot believe that a year has passed since the implementation. I am so proud of what we have achieved as a Trust in implementing this new system. We had over 6,000 people trained, over 600 digital champions and over 250 Quick Reference Guides created demonstrating how to carry out certain tasks. We have done something remarkable in implementing this system.
Despite the individual anxieties there may have been about ability to use the system, employees in this Trust took on the challenge, worked together on individual and team competencies, shared best practice with each other and have created safer services for our patients. Our IT services are now so much more resilient than they were and I want to thank the Informatics team for their huge efforts and the changes they have put in place to improve our IT reliability and functionality.
Our Trust, as you know, sets high ambitions and we want to further optimise our usage of Unity, so that the quality and safety of care continues to improve, freeing up more clinical time to care. We will be persistent in extracting as much benefit as possible from this system, so you will continue to see our Unity quick tips and optimisation data. This will, I hope, start to become a “business as usual” tool as part of managing services and performance and will improve consistency in patient care and treatment.
Today is the final day to cast your vote in our four employee/team of the year awards. Please make sure you take this opportunity to show your support for these fantastic colleagues to select our winners. Continuing with the theme of awards, I would like to congratulate this week’s Star of the Week, Nargus Begum, Community Nurse in the Oldbury district nurse team who was nominated by her grateful colleagues. Nargus is a relatively newly qualified nurse and has provided immense support to her team and patients throughout the pandemic, and proved an inspiration to all.