Chief Executive’s Message – Friday 9 December

December 9, 2022

I would like to give my thanks and appreciation to all our colleagues for the care you are providing in very challenging circumstances.

Our emergency departments, children’s services, ambulance services and urgent treatment centres, as well as services in primary care, are under strain either by virtue of the demands exceeding immediate capacity, or because of staffing gaps exacerbated by increases in short term absences. I know this is making both colleagues and patients hugely anxious and we recognise that.

It is our prime responsibility to ensure we put plans in place which will stop at nothing to make our emergency portals safe. Over the coming week there will be a series of engagement sessions with colleagues in our emergency departments and key services that work with them such as urgent treatment centres, the ambulance service and speciality teams from paediatrics, medicine and surgery to explore what we need to keep our patients safe and equally important, how we keep our colleagues safe.

Changes to how our population access health care outside of hospital have contributed to delays in ED, in ambulance handovers and in discharges. All of these impact on our patients and our colleagues and we are committed to maximising our opportunities to reduce the pressures within these areas by listening to you, our colleagues. Please participate and give your honest feedback.

These issues not only affect us, but our neighbours too. All partners in the Black Country are continuing to progress schemes to enable our health and care services to work as well as possible this winter.

Each organisation and borough is working together better than ever to prevent people coming to hospital unnecessarily. We know that it is best for patients to be cared for at home, with the right support, where possible. We all continue to urge our population and our colleagues to take up the vaccinations on offer to keep themselves and their loved ones well.  I know I keep saying this, but it’s a greatly important message – COVID-19 and flu vaccines are life-saving. With high rates of vaccinated people in our communities and among the health and social care workforce we can stem transmission and keep people healthy and reduce the pressure on our services.  Our current vaccination rates are not sufficient and in light of high ‘flu rates that were experienced in the winter in Australia, for example, we need to do better to avoid putting our services under more strain.

We all have a professional duty to protect those who come to see us, and the Trust is making it simple for colleagues to access winter vaccinations across two separate hubs, with early and late opening hours, as well as a roving team of vaccinators visiting wards and departments. This year, we’re also enabling colleagues to book for the vaccination team to come to their ward or department to vaccinate their teams. To find out more, please click here.

Please do your bit to keep yourselves, your loved ones, your patients and each other safe this winter.