Friday 19 June 2020 - CEO's Blog
I really appreciated all of the positive comments received in response to the letter that Kathy and I sent out at the end of last week expressing the Board’s support for the issues being raised by the Black Lives Matters movement and acknowledging the differential impact that Covid-19 has had on people of Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic heritage. We committed to a number of actions in that letter and our aim is to write again after the Board meeting in July 2020 to let you know what we’ve done to progress them.
One of the things we committed to was to establish a 50 person staff forum to help all of our people from every background, professional group and part of our organisation to speak directly to the Executive Team and tell it like it is! The forum will be independently chaired and the agenda set by its members. We’re launching the nominations process today on Net-I so look out for that. You may want to put yourself forward or nominate a colleague who you think would be particularly active or has something of special importance to say. We’re aiming to hold the first staff forum on 16 July and more details will follow.
One of the highlights of my week was a visit to the new Treatment Centre extension at QHB with Kathy, our chair. This new £23m facility is the biggest capital development at QHB in over 15 years. It will provide state-of-the-art operating theatres for planned orthopaedic surgery, a 28-bedded ward and outpatient accommodation for orthopaedics, urology and breast services. I was really impressed by the high standard of this new facility and what it will mean for our patients. I was delighted to hear that our first patient had been admitted this week for total joint replacement. We’re starting slowly as part of our familiarisation process with the new building and also to ensure that we’re applying our strict infection control processes to protect any planned surgical cases from Covid-19. When the new unit is fully operational it means that all of our clinical services at QHB will either be delivered in the main hospital building or within the Treatment Centre and its extension.
Thanks to all my colleagues who have embraced the new requirements for masks and face coverings to be worn in all the general circulation space within our hospitals and in non-clinical work places, where it’s not possible to guarantee a two metre social distance. Naturally, in our clinical areas, PPE will continue to be worn as has been the case throughout. Everyone seems to have gotten behind this new requirement and I’d particularly like to say a big thank you to our colleagues who have been based at the entrances to our hospitals to ensure that everyone who needed it was supplied with a surgical mask. Staying focussed on our infection prevention and control measures, particularly social distancing and hand hygiene, is a really important way of protecting ourselves, patients, visitors and helping them to feel safe in our hospitals.
Thank you too to War Memorial Village Derby for donating our new blue bench, which can be seen opposite the main entrance at RDH – you can’t miss it, its bright blue, depicting an NHS scene and with a message ‘thank you to our amazing NHS staff’. Thanks also to Avtar, one of our porters, who has been running every day for many weeks to raise money for a memorial to colleagues we’ve lost in the pandemic. I’ve been really inspired by his commitment and his efforts have touched us all. Our own COO Sharon Martin has joined him for a run and I know many others are keen to next week. If you can please take the time to sponsor him by clicking here.
A few months ago, if you’d asked me about MS teams, you definitely would’ve gotten a blank look. However, this has now become an integral way in which so many of us are working. Well done to our IT team for rolling out this technology so rapidly, enabling colleagues to work from home and to support our social distancing efforts. It’s amazing how much can be done using this medium and this week we held another of our workshops for our governors discussing some of our restoration and recovery plans and our progress developing our Exceptional Care Together strategy, which will be published in July 2020. Yesterday, I even took part in an interview panel for a new consultant head and neck surgeon. All went swimmingly and we made an absolutely cracking appointment! The strength of the applicants was a real credit to our Head and Neck Surgical service in both Derby and Burton.
I paid a visit to our Discharge Assessment Unit on level 3 at RDH on Thursday afternoon together with Sharon Martin. We joined quite a gathering of folk – all socially distanced of course. We were there to mark the discharge of a patient who had been with us for many weeks and had fought so bravely to overcome Covid-19. He was leaving the hospital with his family after spending such a long time with us and we just wanted to show our support and best wishes for his recovery.
With a bit of luck, the weather is going to cheer up a little bit for the weekend so hopefully we’ll get a little bit of sunshine. Whether you’re at home or keeping the show on the road in our hospitals, have a good one.
Best wishes
Gavin