COVID-19 Bulletin: Thursday 9 April
April 9, 2020
This is our once a day COVID-19 bulletin. This will take all national and professional guidance and information and tell you which changes we are implementing when and how. The plan to manage through April is our Operation Mary Seacole mobilisation. Remember KINDNESS is our watchword in implementing our plans.
Guidance has been issued to managers on ensuring that staff are set up on rosters when working pre-agreed enhanced or extra hours. Such hours must be locally agreed and not assumed. Revised guidance on nursing unlocking forms will be issued by April 16th to ensure that those working bank and extra shifts in April do get paid! Wage-slip payment for car parking ends in your April pay.
1. Temporary deployment: Conscious incompetence
Right now many doctors, HCAs, nurses and therapists are changing role. From non-ward areas onto our wards, and from both ward and non-ward work into NIV and Critical Care. Thank you. Associated with those changes are a series of training courses and some observational practice. It is really important that for each individual we hold the right records and paperwork of the work you have done to be ready. These must be filled centrally. If you have not already done so or are unsure what is required, speak up.
Crucial to these filings is your declaration of concern and of gaps in your knowledge and competence. We will be safer together if we know what someone does not know. An assessment of the overall staffing risk we face combines both quantity (how many on shift) with an assessment of the quality of skills we have in place. The personal competency declaration form is attached.
2. Introducing Purple Wristbands during this Pandemic
As our Chief Executive explained in today’s COVID Update 11 @SWBHnhs we are introducing a new wristband across our sites to support safe care at this challenging time. The attached document explains why, when and how. We are hoping to assist patients who need the right care at the right time in accordance with their express wishes.
3. Services relocating or reducing with COVID-19
Our services are changing. Some have moved to remote technology offerings. This is not just outpatients as last week, but ward rounds this week. Allowing isolating colleagues to play their part in care. Other services have relocated between our sites. That position continues to evolve. A register is maintained in the silver tactical meetings that every Group is part of.
The attached document summarises just current state changes:
No services should stop taking or electronically registering referrals. Doing so allows us to triage patients and begin to scale our response to a long term recovery plan.
4. Quality Improvement Half Day next week…
There are lots of meetings and events cancelled this month and next. Some have proceeded by WebEx, like our Trust Board. Increasingly we are undertaking clinical practice using these technologies. Last week in outpatients, and this week for some ward rounds. This is helping isolating experts to help care for our patients.
COVID-19 is a huge learning opportunity. And a chance to share and support one another in and across teams. That is why April and May’s Quality Improvement Half Days are still going ahead. Using technology! The topic will be COVID-19! Next Thursday using some of the time between 13.00-17.00 – agendas issued early next week.
5. Weekend weekday working….
Thank you to everyone for responding to the Call To Action to make sure this Bank Holiday works for acute and emergency services, and key clinical and ancillary services, as if it was four more weekdays. This decision reflects the Surge and the need to make sure we have people on site able to be trained and to work in new teams.
If you are a medical secretary you are unlikely to be expected in. If you drive our Shuttle Bus or run catering outlets you may well be needed. Pharmacy, extra cleaning, our alcohol team, our HR advice line, swabbers, our homeless support service, operational managers and Executive are on site and working. Hopefully we can delay the peak of the surge by the care we offer, by the testing we are doing, and especially by our work to discharge patients who safely can be and create the beds needed to manage increased and increasingly unwell admissions.
If you are truly unsure whether you need to be in email us via swbh.tactical@nhs.net
6. Get a room! Part of protecting you and others
High-end local hotel rooms are still available. If you are in one, you will not be evicted. We are keeping them for the duration. If you have had a letter asking you to seriously consider moving in, please do just that. And if you are recognising that for the next little while the best answer for you, your work, and your loved ones is separation, then please do make that move. The plan for our organisation to manage best the Surge, and begin to move towards Pandemic Exit in time, is to have the right workforce at work, and keep absence of all types below 30%. Swab testing and hotel separation play a key role in that.
We have on-site rest or crash rooms if you need a break after your shift. More open next week. We have showers around the site. And overnight fridges with frozen free meals.
Richard Burnell’s One Minute Resilience Videos are a twitter fav. Here’s his latest.
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