Chief Executive’s Message – Friday 6 December
December 6, 2019
4,065 colleagues know that flu can kill. It’s not a common cold. They also know that the vaccine is not live, and so has not made you ill. That it contains no porcine products. And that it is suitable for almost anyone subject to clinical review. One of our colleagues, Roger Hackley, has made a short film to explain why the vaccine matters. If you have chance please take a moment to listen to it. If you have already had your flu vaccine, please do talk about that choice with your colleagues. Our safety depends on one another.
Yesterday the Trust’s Board heard from Nicola Tomkins and Terri Franklin. They presented our community midwives’ vision for their future working arrangements. Changes they will put into place in 2020. The aim is to help retain and recruit to our teams. But the even bigger aim to help improve outcomes from maternity care locally. We already have a track record of improvement. Our PreCePT work is preventing cerebral palsy in our unit. We have cut still birth numbers. The biggest challenge we now face, or rather still face, is to make sure that excluded and potentially vulnerable families engage with our service earlier in pregnancy. That is what the improvements are all about – delivering our Trust 2020 Quality Plan, and for that matter the long term plan of the wider STP.
Next Tuesday, we have the latest Pioneer event, which you may remember is part of our weconnect employee engagement programme. There are some fantastic examples of changes in working practices, team communication and value setting among the teams taking part. There are also some extraordinary engagement “scores” where action has tackled low morale or poor involvement. Remember as a Trust we are trying to achieve a rating of 4/5 for engagement. If we did that we would be in the best 15 Trusts for participation anywhere in the NHS; we’d be properly, and in your view, a great place to work. One of our pioneer teams has just posted a staff rated engagement score of 4.39/5.
Our QI Poster Contest Awards took place yesterday too. 13 finalists from over 70 entries; imaginative projects, real outcomes, new skills learnt and talents displayed in how the posters were constructed. All of those remain on display across our organisation, and either on the electronic carousels or on the walls of the Education Centre you can see the depth and breadth of ability and commitment @SWBHnhs. Many of these posters will go on to be published or win awards elsewhere, or, like our trainee doctor led, sleep and wellbeing programme, have real impact across our Trust in 2020. You voted for a prize to go to our cancer and emergency care teams for their new referral pathway project and poster.
The judging panel picked out three other winners: Frailty at the Front Door, from our silver accredited QIHD Rapid Response Team; children’s nasal phototherapy, which is attracting NIHR interest; and our overall £5,000 winner: The PDSA programme around sepsis and sepsis screening that has involved so many staff in 2019, led by Martin Chadderton and the improvement team. We are back in the 90s for screening (having recovered after Unity) and the drive to get treatment to the right patients inside an hour remains in the year ahead, when sepsis will still be our number 1 Quality Priority.
I know that, by now, a lot of individuals and teams will have been involved in our weAssure quality improvement work. A part of that process is to help us to get ready to see the Care Quality Commission again in 2020 and push ourselves towards that Good rating. To have a honest incident reporting culture and a thriving improvement culture are central to that effort, so the QIHD accreditation, the QI poster contest, and the wider welearn and Learning From Excellence work that we do and are doing more of, are absolutely mission critical to our future as a local health system. I notice that work has a new addition to the Trust twitter family via @SWBQuality.
Another sure-fire component of matching the CQC’s standards is ensuring that we hear our patients’ voices and act on their feedback. More than a quarter of maternity clients now fill out Friends and Family data, and the Trust has over 20 ways in which we routinely do hear from patients. Next year’s Patient Voice scorecard will help us to bring together that feedback into one place and ensure we do not have blindspots in the Trust where no activity is taking place. As part of getting ready for our 2019-20 annual report we are building our top 100 list of things we have changed based on patients’ feedback. I know of loads, but you will know of more, so do get in touch with me, or Ruth Wilkin if you have changes made in your team or service because of what you have heard.
The Trust does work hard to try and thank people their service, especially when that is provided over many years. Dr Chand’s exceptional commitment to radiology was celebrated today, pictured above, and there are many others who leave the Trust with our thanks after dedicated commitment to our patients and to colleagues. The Board has asked that we look again at how best we support anyone considering retirement to make sure that we have a clear menu of options for individuals to consider, whether that is continuing in current or other employment with us, or a structured move into volunteering. That will come back through the Clinical Leadership Executive in the New Year, as we refine the work we are doing to improve staff retention.
Our Christmas decorating contest is now just a fortnight away! To enter please email Katherine.bayley@nhs.net, and if you still have not claimed your department’s £50 that can be done via the finance office at Sandwell. It is beginning to feel like a month of celebration, so do get involved if you can. Thank you as ever for all your hard work.
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