Chief Executive’s Message – Friday 22 July

July 22, 2022

Thank you to all colleagues who have battled through the extreme heat this week to keep your services running and prioritise patient safety. I know that it has been incredibly challenging and uncomfortable – I hope the additional supplies of bottled water and some iced refreshments made their way through to those of you most in need of additional hydration and cooling down.

We continue to see, treat and admit into hospital beds increasing numbers of patients with COVID-19. This isn’t translating into more people being acutely unwell as a result of the virus, as few have COVID-19 as their primary diagnosis. Nevertheless we are keeping in line with national guidance to test and stream all patients appropriately so that we can minimise the risk of transmission of these two very contagious strains.  There is an increasing school of thought that those guidelines are unsustainable given the urgent care and elective recovery expectations placed upon us.  We are representing this view regularly, along with other Trusts, at regional and national forums.

I must emphasise that our updated IPC guidelines now include the requirement for EVERYONE to wear a fluid-resistant surgical mask when you are in a shared area in our Trust estate, in patient’s homes who are untested, and in all health centres. I have seen excellent compliance in our clinical areas this week but I have to say I am disappointed in my experiences within some of the non-clinical parts of the Trust. Please ensure you comply and challenge your colleagues appropriately. The absence of colleagues due to sickness has continued to rise and we need to avoid more people catching the virus and needing to stay away from work.

Summer has well and truly arrived, but there has been no easing of demand across our services, particularly in urgent and emergency care, where the pressure is feeling relentless. We need to ensure that we are all pulling together to improve the care we provide for patients which is, if we are honest, sub-optimal, despite the best efforts of our clinical and support teams. Actions to deal with this must focus on avoiding admission through our community teams working hand in hand with local authority teams, meeting the needs of patients at home within two hours through our urgent community response approach, ensuring that our frailty pathway is effective and implemented appropriately, best use of same day emergency care and straightforward care navigation so that we wrap the right care round our patients as quickly as possible.  Wards and services must “pull” patients up from our emergency portals – our ED teams are under too much pressure to be expected to “push” those patients to you.

Ensuring that patients can move safely and effectively through our integrated care pathways is everyone’s job whether you work in primary care, in the community, on a surgical or medical ward or in our very busy emergency and acute assessment areas. Please ensure you support colleagues and play your part so that patient care can be better each day.