Heartbeat March 2020

Our Trust’s plan to manage
the pandemic
Treating and caring for a significantly
larger number of patients who may
become increasingly unwell has been
the main challenge for us caused by
coronavirus. We now have a clear plan
in place to manage both the patient
needs and help all colleagues stay
healthy and at work.
Our plan has six parts:
1. Expanding our critical
care capacity
Intensive care will expand into D16 at City
Hospital and Newton 1 (OPAU) at Sandwell
Hospital as this is required. Anaesthetists
and intensivists will run these facilities with
nurses and health care assistants. In order to
properly staff these newly expanded areas
we will need an additional 160 colleagues
to join that team, who will come initially
from theatres but will also need colleagues
in some speciality roles and other ward
areas. Our training has been developed to
equip colleagues with the skills they need.
2. Changes to medical rotas in
our assessment areas and wards
Doctors in higher level training and those
who have been recently working on our
medical wards and assessment units have
to date been staffing these areas. We will
increasingly need to look to doctors from
other areas supporting the rotas including
from surgical and less acute specialties.
Information on the training available is on
Connect.
3. Non-ward based clinicians
to be moved to work on our
wards
With the expanded critical care units and
extra wards open we know we will need
the support of about 100 nurses and
health care assistants, who currently work
in other areas, to care for patients in our
community and acute wards. Training has
been developed and individuals are being
contacted directly to be asked to take on a
new ward-based role.
4. New hires and other
colleagues deployed differently
We are still recruiting! Our therapy support
to our ward areas remains vital and we
know that we will need an increase in
colleagues worked as ward clerks, health
care assistants and ward service officers.
People may be asked to fulfil one of these
roles with the appropriate training.
COVID-19
5. Payment for working
differently
If you are deployed to work in a different
role you will be paid the higher amount
of either your existing salary or new
salary. We will aim to accommodate your
personal circumstances in developing
shift patterns and, where possible, will
move pairs of people from teams to
new roles. Our bank shift rates will also
increase.
6. Integrated care at scale
Acute and community services remain
integrated and we will look to move
roles between different areas. We
continue to support primary care
with staffing and personal protective
equipment (PPE), in particular the
two GP practices in our areas that are
operating solely for COVID-19 patients –
Aston Pride and Parsonage Street.
Thank you to all colleagues who
are and will be working in different
ways to support patients and each
other. You are truly our NHS Heroes.
Intensive care training began on 30 March 2020
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