Heartbeat December 2019

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Ward competition highlights importance of medicines safety CORPORATE AND GENERAL NEWS During the last week of November, we celebrated International Medicines Safety Week across the organisation. International Medicines Safety Week focuses on safe use of medicines and reporting of adverse drug reactions, particularly in patients on multiple medicines. The awareness week is recognised across the globe every year and is usually celebrated during the last week of November. To help increase awareness of the safety week, our pharmacy department hosted a drop in session across Sandwell and City Hospitals around the topic of medicine in general. They also addressed medicine safety concerns of both colleagues and patients. “The events were a great tool for our team to inform our staff, patients and visitors of the importance of medicines and the yellow card reporting scheme” said Suki Tagger, Lead Pharmacy Technician. “Both our Sandwell and City events played host to a medicine safety quiz which gave anybody in attendance the opportunity to be in with the chance win a prize. The quiz was made up of pharmacy and medicine related questions which all aimed to increase knowledge around medicine and what we do whilst keeping everything fun. Also, congratulations to Dean Lavender who won first prize in the individual quiz.” Wards that were unable to attend any of the events were encouraged to participate in the ‘survival of the safest ward challenge,’ a medicine and pharmacy focused competition Suki Tagger, Lead Pharmacy Technician and Christopher Anton, Administrative Coordinator in Pharmacy hosted medicine safety drop in sessions across Sandwell and City during International Medicines Safety Week Patients breathing easy after relocation of respiratory hub targeted at clinical wards and departments. The completion was designed to bring colleagues together, all in massive effort to get everyone involved across the Trust. Christopher Anton, Administrative Coordinator in pharmacy believes the week was vital as it reminded people about implications of drugs. He said: “Clinicians should always be alert to the possibility of an adverse drug reaction in their patients and Medicines Safety Week is great at drawing attention to this, the existence of the regional yellow card centre in the Trust and the work of pharmacy in promoting medicines safety in general.” In November our respiratory service was transformed with the development of a respiratory inpatient hub which moved all inpatient respiratory care under one roof at City Hospital on wards D15 and D17. The development of the respiratory hub at City Hospital has now meant that patients who have a respiratory condition that is expected to result in an inpatient stay longer than two days will stay within the newly formed respiratory hub. Outpatient clinic appointments remain running at both Sandwell and City Hospitals with specialist consultants and the respiratory team continuing to see patients who are admitted through to the assessment units or wards at Sandwell Hospital. Sharing his thoughts on the development Respiratory Hub nursing team of the new hub, Respiratory Consultant Dr Arvind Rajasekaran said: “The development of the new respiratory hub at City means that our respiratory beds are now together on one site so for patients who need to stay in hospital, they will be able to be seen more quickly and by the most appropriate clinician. Reducing delays in treatment and having specialists on hand will inevitably improve patient outcomes and also reduce length of stay.” “Reconfiguration of services of such a scale required careful planning and over the past several months we engaged and worked with several teams both within and outside of our organisation. This is a time to reflect on this hard work and acknowledge the impact of all of the colleagues who have made this possible. I would like the specifically thank the patient forums for their suggestions and my clinical colleagues who have changed their working patterns to make this a reality. Special thanks are also due to the Emergency Department team, Estates, West Midlands Ambulance Service, IT and the Respiratory Hub project team.” For more information about the change to the respiratory services, contact Dr Arvind Rajasekaran via arvind. rajasekaran@nhs.net. 10
Occupational Therapy Week – small change, big impact iCares and social service occupational therapists joined forces to celebrate Occupational Therapy Week in November. During Occupational Therapy Week, therapists across the country held thousands of events and activities throughout the UK to promote the profession within a wide variety of settings. This year’s theme was ‘small change, big impact,’ with the aim being to celebrate and champion the impact of occupational therapy on services, people’s lives and the communities they live in. “To celebrate the special occasion in Sandwell we hosted awareness stands at Sandwell Council House as well as Rowley Regis Hospital," said Helen Bessant, Clinical Team Leader. Kirsten Cashford and Hannah Downey, occupational therapists in iCares hosted an awareness stand at Sandwell Council House to raise awareness of occupational therapy week “Our occupational therapists were on hand to answer any questions people had and talk about the client group they work with. In addition to this our therapists spoke about the little changes that have the biggest effect.” Feeling the heat at Sandwell Hospital CORPORATE AND GENERAL NEWS Deborah Eden, Occupational Therapist believes the joint collaboration of Sandwell iCares and social services occupational therapists was a fantastic way to generate awareness. She said: “The collaboration between the two sets of occupational therapists was gratifying to see as it showcased the great work all the therapists do in the local area. “If by us recognising Occupational Therapy Week brings the profession to the forefront of people’s minds for that one week, it will have definitely have been worthwhile in my opinion.” Picture this – the alarm is sounding and you realise there’s a fire engulfing the tunnels of our hospital. Would you know what to do? Luckily for us, we have dedicated fire safety, security and estates teams that know every inch of our estate and plan for such events. In October you might have thought you were seeing an emergency unfold before your eyes if you saw fire engines on-site at Sandwell Hospital. In fact, what you would have seen was a controlled fire safety exercise that had been carefully planned with West Bromwich Fire Station. Each year we work with the local fire station to help simulate a real-life emergency call out. This is very much a twoway exercise as it allows both the fire crew and our teams to check their procedures and practises are as efficient and effective as they need to be. Using the hospital provides a safe environment to prepare for complex situations that may arise in real-life situations. Taking the lead on our side was Sarah Ludlow, Specialist Fire Training Officer. Working with Dale Pound, Crew Commander and Pete Finazzi, Watch Commander together they planned the event from start to finish. This exercise had some unexpected twists and turns thrown in to really test those taking part on the day. West Bromwich Fire Station crew onsite at Sandwell Hospital This included the threat of chemicals and contractors that had been unaccounted for. Sarah commented: “Preparation for this event took over two weeks of collaboration with Dale and Pete. We went into great detail to ensure that we had every opportunity to fully test the procedures in place for both the Trust and the fire station. Lots of people lent their support and we all played various roles. This included everything from the police to ambulance crews. Santokh Sagoo and Phil Hanson from our security team even joined us as well to make this as realistic as possible. Overall it was a good exercise and both sides took learnings away from it.” Dale said: “The outcome from the exercise was that all the casualties located in the basement area of the hospital were found by crews. It took slightly longer than expected which we will review. Our biggest learning on the day was not to overthink and to deploy our crews quicker.” He added: “We’d like to thank everyone from the hospital for use of the excellent facilities.” 11
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Heartbeat December 2019

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