Heartbeat December 2019

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Letters, of less than 200 words please, can be sent to the Communications Department, Trust Headquarters, Sandwell Hospital or by email to swb–tr.SWBH–GM–Heartbeat@nhs.net YOUR RIGHT TO BE HEARD Heating going forward Dear Heartbeat, Every year since I’ve worked here the same thing happens at this Trust. The heating breaks come the start of winter. This problem can be solved so easily yet it happens every year! The simple solution would be to turn the heating on August for one day. Any heater which doesn’t work can be fixed come September/October rather than teams and departments going without heating. It’s a pretty simple concept and would mean the Estates team wouldn’t be rushed off their feet with people demanding portable heaters like this year, the year before and so on. Why can’t a simple process like this be implemented? My Nan does this every year to make sure her heating works as it should. Surely we can do the same thing right? Anonymous Dear colleague The estates department endeavours to prepare the heating systems in all of the Trust buildings for the onset of the cooler months. In Trinity House a number of planned maintenance tasks are carried over the summer to ensure that the heating system is working correctly and compliant with statutory legislation as it is heated by pressurised steam. This year significant alterations have been made to the system due to the building works that have taken place. Issues with balancing of the system have prevented a few areas from receiving the correct heating. This was not easy to identify until we could run the heating with a significant demand and this issue is now resolved. We apologise for any inconvenience caused. Kind regards, Malcolm Partridge Head of Estates Bells on wards Dear Heartbeat, Quite a few of the wards I visited recently have took a strangely long time to answer the doorbells. I totally get they are busy especially around winter months but to have to ring the bell numerous time just to get answer can be very frustrating, especially when lots of the people inside the ward see I’m waiting outside. Are only certain people allowed to open the ward and are they supposed to pretend I’m not there? I just think more from a patient perspective more than anything else, if I was coming to visit a friend or a family member in hospital and was left outside for so long it would be a very frustrating experience. It would compound the difficult experience of visiting a loved one in hospital. Please may I reiterate, this hasn’t happened on all wards I have visited in my time here, it just seems to be happening a bit more and I wanted to find out why. Anonymous Dear colleague Thanks for your letter. The bells outside the wards are important for security reasons so that the nurse in charge is aware of who is coming onto the wards. I can assure you that the teams don’t deliberately ignore the doorbell. Instead, they are more often busy with patients and relatives. I am sorry this is frustrating for you but thank you for your patience. Kind regards, Paula Gardner Chief Nurse Recycling computers Dear Heartbeat, Now that Unity is live and we’ve had shiny new computers I wonder what’s happened to all of the computers that were taken away. We all had ipods on the wards that we used with vitalpacs and with the introduction of Unity; we didn’t need to use these anymore so they were all collected in. Sandwell and West Birmingham is a particularly poor and deprived area and I would hope that as a Trust we would be doing everything we can to make sure that equipment that is no longer needed by the Trust could be donated to the community or reused in some way. I know there are projects in other areas of the country that refurbish and donate computers and equipment to community groups. Would there be an opportunity for us to do the same? Could we refurb and donate unused computers to colleagues who are still trying to get used to using computers at work? Appreciate there are data protection requirements but surely we can do something. This could be a significant sustainability and recycling programme if we’re able to tackle it. Regards Anon Dear colleague, Fortunately at our Trust we often use our IT equipment to its fullest and follow a regular replacement programme, this means that we have little in the way of unused equipment. The equipment we replaced to make sure that Unity could work to the best of its abilities has been repurposed within the Trust, in non-unity areas, for training staff and where possible reused for spare parts. When equipment is defunct and completely unusable, it is recycled appropriately. In the case of iPads, we are currently looking at options to loan these to patients now that we have NHS Public WiFi live across our Trust. Kind regards, Martin Sadler Chief Informatics Officer 30
Toby writes about… why Good is good for you TobyLewis_SWBH TOBY’S LAST WORD If you turned to my article to look into 2020 and what lies ahead, best to dig out the back issue and review that in November’s Heartbeat (available online too). Safe to say that, as Richard sets out in his Chair’s column, there is a bright future for our organisation, not just in traditional fields, but as we work more and more closely with GPs, and build on the distinctive success of teams like our Sandwell health visitors, our integrated sexual health service, our alcohol liaison team, and our specialist community based paediatric teams. This article is about our upcoming Care Quality Commission inspection. When is it? Properly, I don’t know. It is likely in 2020. Probably our three new GP practices will be the start. Then our Requires Improvement services – read on below. And any teams being put forward to join our Outstanding elite: community children’s, critical care and end of life service. Teams demonstrating what we can achieve with all the pressures and constraints we tend to talk about. What I do know is that teams rated as Good or better are teams who find recruitment and retention easier. That might be because the rating gives cache. Recruits look online and seeking differences between us and our neighbours they set store by the CQC. More probably it is because the things we want and value at work are the same things the CQC look for: • A supportive boss • Team discussions • Fun but support when times are hard • A commitment to quality improvement (hold the front page) • Multi-professional working • Training and development • Getting the basics right • Having a plan for the future In 2014, 2017 and 2018 I approached the CQC inspection with a view that we should be as we are, and see what it brought. Good ratings might have overstated us, poor ones probably unfairly maligned us. I think on balance I have changed my mind. Having seen the huge boost to teams succeeding in the CQC process, I think now we need to work as one to get the prize. What prize? A Good rating, not just in most teams (we are 70 per cent there) but across our organisation. Only that prize will give us the flexibility to develop and adapt services freed from too much external bureaucracy, clear that we can work within a system, but innovate, invest and develop as you choose we should. We have just three Requires Improvement core services: I know how hard our children’s services team are working to get back to Good. Across emergency care and medicine there is real determination to see the quality of our cardiology service, the excellence of our stroke team, the respiratory hub, and our GI services, recognised for the specialist work that they do. Acute medicine and elderly care dominate QI awards. A&E stood out at our Star Awards. I know how hard “winter” is. I understand that “capacity” dominates and distracts. I also know that success brings rewards, mostly more success. And that is why we need to work together to show that firstly our Glimpses of Brilliance are actually most days. And secondly that we work together to tackle to genuine risk issues. Our Good and Outstanding services are not blessed with ease. They The way the CQC see us The domains five CQC are domains described by the CQC as follows Is it safe? Is it effective? Is it caring? Is it responsive? Is it well-led? where everyone matters too face tough times. They are rated highly because of how they face those problems. This festive season do not put the turkey down and read our last three CQC reports. But if you did, you’d see success, but you would also read about out of date stock, expired mandatory training, resus trolley checklist gaps, and drug errors. These are not functions of money or policy, they are symptoms of attention and detail. The very things the CQC look for and ones we can address. So we can get to Good. The challenge of 2020 is do we want to? Is it worth the hassle and worth setting aside whatever immediate frustrations exist, in pursuit of a bigger gain – public credit for what you do brilliantly, less external interference in what we want to do locally, and above all a chance to say to people not yet joining us – come here, we know what we are doing? Going into 2020 let’s think about resolutions. Please consider where our ‘rating’ sits in your plans. None of us come to work for any reason other than the patients we care about. They deserve the best. You deserve that the rating system that reflects your efforts. Only you can get us to Good. I think you will. Sandwell and West Birmingham NHS Trust !Safeguarding and protection from abuse !Managing risk !Safe care and treatment !Medicines management !Track record !Learning when things go wrong !Assessing needs and delivering evidence-based treatment !Monitoring outcomes and comparing with similar services !Staff skills and knowledge !How staff, teams and services work together !Supporting people to live healthier lives !Consent to care and treatment !Kindness, respect and compassion !Involving people in decisions about their care !Privacy and dignity !Person-centred care !Taking account of the needs of different people !Timely access to care and treatment !Concerns or complaints !Leadership capacity and capability !Vision and strategy !Culture of the organisation !Governance and management !Management of risk and performance !Management of information !Engagement and involvement !Learning, improvement and innovation swbh.nhs.uk 31
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Page 32: What's on - January 2020 EVENT DATE

Heartbeat December 2019

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