COVID-19 bulletin: Thursday 26 March
March 26, 2020
The Trust is now publishing a daily bulletin. This will take all guidance and information and tell you which changes we are implementing when and how. Please use this bulletin and daily cascade arrangements within clinical groups to guide local action. Remember KINDNESS is our watchword in implementing these changes.
- We have now closed our sites to people other than employees and patients
As we indicated on Tuesday, from this morning all of our sites are closing to visitors. That includes the BTC, BMEC, Rowley Regis and our acute sites, as well as Leasowes. This makes it very important you carry staff ID and expect to be respectfully challenged. The purpose of this close-down is to help us to prevent infection spread but also to create an environment where we can concentrate our efforts on the current pandemic and on supporting staff in this situation. Sometimes, because of our estate, the only place for colleagues to step away from the clinical environment is to step into public areas and we want a degree more privacy in this difficult time.
Patient visiting was changed on March 14th. That remains, although other places are now adopting the same strategy. Visiting is via telephone and video phone, and each ward has a supply. Please ensure your colleagues know how to use this and actively draw it to the attention of our patients. Now is a frightening time for many and it must be right that we work to support them seeing or talking to relatives. There are a very small number of visitor exceptions, which our security arrangements will be aware of and support. They may need to contact a ward on that basis, and will benefit from your assistance.
To be clear the intention is not to make the site appear intimidating or militarised, but it is intended to support the very disciplined effort now needed to manage the weeks ahead.
2. Our wards are now designated as query covid (red) and non-covid (blue)
This is a change based on both staff feedback and the evolving pandemic situation. Clearly, even in a non-covid area it is possible a patient may develop symptoms. Likewise not everyone in a query covid area has received a test outcome, and some who do have such outcomes may later prove positive.
Notwithstanding all of that, to aid understanding, PPE clarity, and simplicity for staff working shifts in a changing situation, this is now, and will remain our approach. Please look for these colour designations in other areas of our sites too, such as theatres.
3. Hotel accommodation – there’s still room(s)
We have been messaging for a few days the option, and the need, to take up hotel accommodation. We would urge colleagues to consider now this option, which all of the NHS is working through. Leaving loved ones and established households is not easy, but as travel gets tougher, shift patterns change, and it becomes ever more vital to be ready for an evolving patient care emergency, please look to make this choice in the next 72 hours.
To book a room you can email swbh.hotel-booking@nhs.net
If your request is out of hours, you will get an out of office email with instructions of the number to call in order to book your room.
4. Critical care changes
As you know the next phase of the pandemic sees critical care occupancy and use grow hugely. Training is going on now to support the first wave of extra staff to move into our critical care teams. Query Covid patients are in both units presently, and D16 at City will open soon as a red Unit too. OPAU at Sandwell will, in time, open as a blue unit.
You will be aware of the London Excel Field Hospital. Plans locally are not finalised nor imminent, but it gives you a sense of the scale of what is ahead. If you have critical care skills, or expect to be asked to help and want to be given training now (and you will have training before you start) please contact Rebecca O’Dwyer and the team. We cannot say we have not had warnings of what is to come and now we need to finalise our preparations. The skills and quality of our team is such that we have been asked to coordinate this effort across our STP. Even so this will be a significant psychological and logistical challenge, to kindly look after many more people in very grave situations.
5. PPE and scrub distribution
Intensive work is going on across our sites to make sure that we have a clear and smooth 24/7 access arrangement for both PPE and scrubs where relevant. Visuals and paper briefings will be distributed tomorrow to absolutely make clear how this works. Senior staff are out and about talking to and listening to you to make sure that the arrangements are understood and work in practice not just in theory. Do get in touch with any of the senior team with queries, and look out for Drs Mark Anderson, Nick Makwana, Jawad Khan and Sakeet Singhal, as well as Nicola Taylor, Julie Thompson and Toby Lewis who are roving across sites in the next four days to make sure that we hear your concerns and help clarify any glitches or misconceptions.