Heartbeat: Surgery – putting patients first as they look to the future
September 23, 2020
2020 has been a year of firsts – a global pandemic, a national response, social distancing, shielding and isolating, things you would never imagine would have an impact in the delivery of patient care have come to the forefront, but few have stood in the way of determined colleagues delivering safe and effective care to those in need.
One area that has been taking the lead on recovery and restoration of normal services as they were ‘pre-COVID’ has been surgical services. We caught up with Shinade Coughlan, Group General Manager, to find out more. She explained: “Throughout the peak of COVID-19, we maintained an emergency provision on-site. We transferred all high-risk surgeries to the private sector hospitals to ensure we could maintain some service provision within our Trust.
“As the pandemic eased we gradually recommenced activity onsite on 13 July; initially with one theatre session per day running through Birmingham Treatment Centre (BTC). To do this, we redesigned patient flow, pre-assessment guidance, shielding advice and conducted a waiting list review to ensure the most urgent patients had access first. Since then we have gradually built up additional theatres and now run four theatres daily from BTC. Last week we decided push forward with restoration and now we stand to be back to delivering 100% of activity by 1 September 2020.”
Speaking of how such an important step has been taken forward for surgery, Shinade explained: “It has been a real team approach to redesigning and restoring activity. I’ve lead the organisation recovery program for elective provision, but have been supported by Leann Coughlan, DGM for Theatres, Amber Markham, Clinical Lead for Theatres, Mr Andy Torrance, CD for surgery and also wider stakeholders, such as ASU staff, booking teams and clinical leads.”
Looking to the future we also have provisions in place in the event of a second surge. “As part of our recovery plans, we have ensured we have a step up and step down model in place, whereby we know which staff would be redeployed should COVID-19 return,” Shinade told us. “This means we can plan for a second surge knowing the impact on theatres based on redeployment of staff and expansion space required for critical care beds.”
She added: “There have been many challenges given the need to completely redesign our service offering. For example, emergency services have completely relocated to Sandwell Hospital, paediatrics has moved to Sandwell too. We have had to convert two theatres to minor operations units given airflow challenges in previous rooms.
“Challenges, however, have allowed us to think outside of the box and seek new solutions, perhaps some we hadn’t considered before. It is a really exciting time to completely redesign the way we use our estate, allocate sessions based on demand and think differently about how we work. It has also given us the chance to develop our staff training and upskill them in multiple specialties – there have been some real opportunities to come out of this situation.”