Chief Executive’s Message – Friday 27 April

April 27, 2018

Today’s Friday message is in part a tribute to one person – Elaine Newell. But it is also an invitation to all of us to join in with something important, clinical, life changing and entirely free. Being in a hospital, specifically a hospital bed, is part of the service model we have. Wrapping care, rest, attention and medicine around someone else. Yet being in a hospital bed has some negative consequences. We have an amazing record of infection control in our Trust, so much so that I sometimes fear we take that for granted. We have fought to get the right microbiology model within Black Country pathology, able to support at the bedside. MRSA screening remains part of our core standards and we can, in all honesty, do better.

Now, being in hospital is, despite our outstanding rating for caring, an isolating and fear inducing experience. Cooped into a bed. In a gown or pyjamas. We deliver food and warm drinks. Respond to bells or calls and help someone to the toilet. Now we “let” visitors come and see their loved ones, and watch us work. We provide a bed for those visitors (talking of which do you know how to access one? If not contact Debbie Talbot). But, typically, our patients are confined, or confine themselves to bed. Talking to our nurses and therapists, when we then come to support going home, or discharge, we find deconditioned people, less able to look after themselves than the day before they came into our hospital. And the effect of that deterioration lasts, well after discharge. Perhaps for a lifetime.

We can change this. We should. We will. But all of us have to play a part. The Chief Nursing Officer for England, Jane Cummings, has set out to lead a campaign to end PJ Paralysis. Seemingly this campaign is opposed by the Daily Mail. Take your choice then. I am with Jane, and you can see from our photo so is Elaine Newell, who retires as our chief nurse today. And Paula Gardner, who hundreds of you will have met during her induction, and who starts work tonight as one of two clinicians serving on our Trust Board. Heartbeat next week has an interview with Paula, alongside David Carruthers, our medical director, who started in post this January; Pun Sharma, our chief pharmacist who is leading work to have us ready in August for electronic prescribing, and Lydia Jones who in June becomes our director of therapies, having started here as an apprentice. My point is that our clinical leadership is a multi professional team. And that team stands behind a campaign to change the patient experience of our inpatients, at Leasowes, Rowley Regis, City, Sheldon and Sandwell.

We will not be banning pyjamas. In fact our forthcoming ward welcome packs will provide little dignities and comforts like a toothbrush on admission. But what we will be doing is starting to make it normal, routine, accepted, and encouraged to be up out of bed. Once we get to Midland Met, we will have kitchens for patients to cook in, inspired by our Newton 4 team, and a brilliant huge amenity space for patients to use with their visitors, off the wards, but near to them, our Winter Garden.

Now Elaine does not want a fuss, so this tribute is brief. A short time as chief nurse has seen us transform recruitment, and begin to deliver consistency of care in our medical wards. Diane Eltringham joined us as director of nursing for surgery last week, while Claire Hubbard has been with us for a while now in medicine. Rachel Carter is the mainstay of the regional maternity system, and Tammy Davies has led our outstanding end of life care service, and now champions safe discharge across the Trust (see the TeamTalk video above). In other words, alongside Debbie, Paul, Gemma and others, Elaine leads a cadre of fantastic professional nurse leaders, making a difference across our Trust. Before that Elaine was our director of midwifery during a ten year period when outcomes were changed for the better and services rationalised onto the city site. Serenity is one of the largest midwife led units in England. The quality of which our mums and dads tell us about in survey after survey. Any career is judged by legacy. The huge quantity of gin we bought Elaine to say goodbye cannot obscure that legacy – thank you.

#hellomynameis….Toby