I hope this finds you well.

Supporting our BAME colleagues

As we all know, over recent months the Black Lives Matter movement and the adverse impact Covid-19 has had on BAME people have highlighted the inequalities that exist within the NHS and need addressing. Disappointingly racism is still an everyday occurrence for many, and I am determined we take a zero tolerance approach to this.

My executive colleagues and I believe part of this is to provide a supportive platform to our BAME colleagues to ensure their voice is heard, so we can all understand their lived experiences and learn from them. Does it open up uncomfortable conversations for some people and uncover some unsettling experiences? Yes it does. Is it right we are doing this? Absolutely.

Our Stroke Lead Devesh Sinha has written a series of three blogs, sharing his experiences. His first blog - Everyday racism: my lived experience - is a brutally honest account that is food for thought for all of us. We have been following the feedback and comments on Devesh’s blog on our social media channels –the vast majority of these have been very positive and it's the tweet that's had the most engagement since May.

From Emergency Department to the wards: working as one team to improve patient care

The Covid-19 pandemic also gave a platform for staff to write about their experiences in our hospitals during the peak, and since then we continue to have staff wanting to share their stories of working in our Trust. Not only does this make for an interesting read, it very much feeds into the ethos of working together as one team - TeamBHRUT.

In her blog last week, Jo Player, Clinical Operational Site Manager in our Bed and Site team focused on explaining government-set waiting time standards for patients and the impact on patient care if these are not met. Having spent more than a decade working in ED, Jo was well placed to take on a role that involves working with wards to monitor available beds, and also discusses how she quickly learnt more about the challenges wards face in ensuring our patients don’t experience any delays in leaving hospital.

It is a very timely blog.  Last week I updated you on our clinically led and developed programme to improve our performance against the four hour emergency access standard, and it leads me on nicely to last week’s opening of Holly Ward, at King George Hospital, as a therapy and nurse-led ward for patients who are medically fit, yet require a few additional days before being discharged. For example, they may be waiting for a Covid swab result, package of care, or equipment. The ward operates 24/7 to enable capacity to be freed up on general and acute wards, helping improve patient flow and support our Emergency Departments.

In Conversation With…

In the spotlight last week was Siobhan Graham, who recently helped oversee an upgrade to one of our radiotherapy machines, making us the first Trust in the UK to introduce Ethos Therapy.  This patient-focused treatment uses artificial intelligence to tailor it to our patient’s daily changing needs. She also shares what it was like becoming our Head of Radiotherapy in the midst of the pandemic. Siobhan had only planned to spend a year in the UK before going home to Australia - that was over six years ago!  I’m delighted to know that the opportunities at our Trust have played a big role in keeping her this side of the pond.

Support for new mums 

As a teaching hospital, it’s great news that new mothers at our Trust are set to benefit from more support thanks to medical student Gregory Yates. Gregory spent a month completing an obstetrics and gynaecology placement at our Trust earlier this year and felt he learned so much working alongside our consultant Ziena Abdullah that he asked her to apply to work on the Rod Flower Vacation Scholarship with him.  During his summer scholarship, which ends this month, Gregory has been working on a project on postnatal contraception. Read more in our latest news story.

Adult safeguarding alert trial

We started a new trial last week to help increase the communication of adult safeguarding concerns, which will run for the next six weeks to pilot the use of an alert sticker to be used in addition to the form that gets completed. The sticker will be placed on the outside of the patient folder when the decision to admit the patient is made by the medical team, with the aim of creating a message for the colleague who sees the sticker to ‘contact Safeguarding’.

The trial has been rolled out in our Emergency Department (ED) at Queen’s Hospital, including the Medical Receiving Unit (MRU) and the Same Day Emergency Care (SDEC) wards.

Mr Patel leaves ITU after 121 days

It is always heart-warming to see any of our patients recovering from Covid, and none more so than Mr Patel, who finally left ITU after 121 days. You may remember he celebrated his birthday with us recently.  He will continue his recovery on one of our wards.  You can watch the video of him leaving ITU.

It is a reminder to us all that we must continue to follow good hygiene practices, social distancing, and the wearing of masks, to keep each other safe.

On that note, as always, take care and stay well.

Tony Chambers
Chief Executive