Annual Report and Accounts 2012/13 - Royal Devon & Exeter Hospital

10 1. Our Year
Royal Devon and Exeter NHS Foundation Trust
Annual Report and Accounts 2012/13
• The excellence of our stroke service
was recognised once again with
a place on the national shortlist
for the stroke category in the
Care Integration Awards hosted
by The Health Service Journal and
the Nursing Times. RD&E staff
developed a successful initiative
to help patients recover from
strokes in their own homes instead
of needing to stay in hospital for
treatment. Specialist nursing care
and rehabilitation is provided to the
same quality as the patient would
have received in hospital, but in the
comfort and familiar surroundings
of their home
• We took delivery of a £2.5 million
state-of-the-art surgical robot in
December 2012, and are now one
of only around 20 hospitals in the
UK using robots in complex surgery
to target prostate cancers. Research
and clinical tests have already
confirmed the benefits and safety
of robotic surgery for patients in
certain kinds of complex surgery.
These benefits include a faster
recovery and reduced blood loss,
for example
Consultant urological surgeon,
John McGrath, and a research
team at the University of
Exeter recently won a highly
prestigious grant from
Intuitive Surgical in California,
manufacturers of the da Vinci
surgical robot, to fully fund
provision of a second robot at
the RD&E for nine months. This
will be used exclusively to run
studies looking at differences
in the mental workload, stress
and learning curves of novice
and expert surgeons. The
findings will help inform the
wider NHS about the potential
benefits of robotic surgery in
training the next generation of
surgeons safely, within a timely
fashion and with technology
that may help them deal more
effectively with stressful aspects
of surgical procedures.
The economic environment remains
difficult and, as the Chairman
highlights in his introduction, we
have some tough decisions to
make in order to meet our financial
targets. Making savings has become
increasingly difficult and will require
more radical approaches than we have
previously needed to consider to meet
the on-going challenge of year-onyear
reductions in income. We have
commenced a transformation journey
to help us tackle this task and redesign
our services to make them as safe and
efficient as possible.
Pay is our single biggest area of
expenditure. One of the challenges
facing us is how to reward our staff
fairly for the vital work they do,
whilst also ensuring the overall pay
budget is sustainable. In partnership
with other organisations in the South
West, as part of the South West Pay
Consortium, we have explored the
potential for reform of pay, terms
and conditions of service. This work
has progressed alongside national
negotiations on creating a sustainable
reward system linked to the changing
service and financial environment the
NHS operates in.
Every time we make a decision, it
will be based on the bottom line of
continuing to deliver safe healthcare
for our patients and maximising the
potential of our staff. We already have
a successful track record of doing
this. I am proud of all our staff and
their achievements and I am delighted
to share some of our successes with
you through the pages of this annual
report.
Angela Pedder
Chief Executive