Chief Executive’s Message – Friday 6 August
August 6, 2021
By David Carruthers, Medical Director. Richard Beeken is away.
I was pleased to have the opportunity to meet and welcome many of our new junior doctors who have joined the Trust over the last fortnight. I know that they will receive a warm welcome from you all as they continue their medical training with us. Our juniors are valued parts of our multidisciplinary teams and I am sure they will have a good experience with us. The Trust’s medical training programme continues to receive excellent feedback and lots of people who trained here return later in their careers because of the fond memories they carry of their training here. Welcome to all those new starters. As I said in my video message to you all, and those I have talked to in person (with a mask!), we are here to support you in your training and development. Don’t be afraid to speak up if something doesn’t feel right and take care not to step beyond your competency and responsibilities. Learn how to use Unity well, which will save you time as well as ensure our patients receive the right care. We have much to learn from you from your experiences elsewhere so please share any learnings with your teams. And my ask on all colleagues is that you continue to support and welcome our new junior doctors, being ready and willing to answer questions about how things work round here and not expecting more than they are able to provide from their training and experience.
It is once more a busy time to join the Trust and Covid-19 inpatient numbers continue to be high. This is causing huge pressure on many clinical areas so I want to call out people working in our newly created ward areas, those who are working in red wards who weren’t previously, ICU, AMU, ED and the respiratory hub who have been consistently a COVID-19 area. I know the toll that this continues to take on you so thank you for your ongoing commitment and sacrifice to our Trust and patients. Reservists have also been deployed to support those who are critically unwell and those patients are typically younger than those we have seen before and almost all unvaccinated. Fit and healthy young people are succumbing to the virus and it is very worrying. But it is not just those in our frontline clinical services who are going above and beyond. We are one team and our services only work with everyone delivering their roles effectively. We have all had our work turned upside down by the pandemic which has dramatically changed how we do things. Those who work in support functions are as much a part of our pandemic response as those in frontline clinical services and vital to our restoration and recovery arrangements. Thank you for all that you do.
We have had the support from many patients who have wanted to share their stories widely to encourage people to take up the offer of a vaccine. If you haven’t yet read these do take some time to read about the experiences of patients Jeanette and Claudia. Jeanette describes her symptoms of long Covid which are shocking for anyone to read. Claudia’s baby was delivered by C-section very early as the ICU team battled to save her life. She has been discharged home now but urges pregnant women to get the vaccine. The risks of COVID-19 for pregnant women far outweigh the risks of vaccination. Her story could have been so much worse.
We continue to see abuse on social media directed towards people who promote the COVID-19 vaccine and I am saddened and angered to learn of that abuse being experienced in our clinical services. We all come to work to do a good job and none of us should expect or tolerate verbal abuse, aggression or physical harm. I know that cases of this have increased recently and I want to reinforce Richard Beeken’s message last week, that you must report all cases, call security or the police if you feel threatened – we will not hesitate to prosecute where necessary. Frustration, pain and discomfort can quickly escalate into aggression and whilst this is never acceptable let’s all think about what we can do to ease people’s distress to try and reduce incidents.
Our priority remains to keep you all safe so I would urge you to ensure your individual risk assessments are reviewed and up to date. Community cases of COVID-19 have been reducing over the last few weeks. Although some of that drop may be the result of fewer tests being done, I am hopeful that we could expect to see a reduction in patients being admitted with COVID-19 in the coming weeks. We will be receiving more equipment to get fast COVID testing done which will better enable us to stream patients to the right place of care. However, it remains vital to continue practising good infection prevention and control. Wear the right PPE, wash your hands and keep a safe space from others. Get the vaccine and do your weekly LAMP testing. Let’s carry on keeping ourselves and others safe.
Congratulations to our star of the week, Kulvinder Batt, senior HCA in outpatients who was nominated for her approach to support patients through a new process for one stop appointments in urology. Although nervous, Kully embraced the training and volunteered to provide HCA support for the first week of clinics. Kully has worked with the team to ensure this new way of working was successful and enhanced patient care. Thank you, Kully. Congratulations also to Jo Harvey and the upper GI/HPB CNS team for being finalists in the innovation category of the Mcmillan Professionals Excellence awards which is a significant achievement. We wish you the best of luck in the judging in early September.
Dr David Carruthers, Medical Director