Sue's post board blog - June 2018

This month, our Chair Professor Sue Proctor, talks about our NHS70 celebrations, learning from deaths, our role in preventing terrorism and valuing our bank staff.

Welcome to my ‘post board blog’ for June 2018 following the Trust Board meeting on Thursday 28 June.

This one comes at a time when the country is celebrating the NHS’ 70^th birthday; through special events like last week’s fantastic Looking Back Looking Forward learning disabilities day at Leeds City Museum – check out the brilliant video produced by our anti stigma co-ordinator Tricia Thorpe which was showcased on the day, through ‘NHS 7 Tea’ parties across services and other special projects to mark the milestone year.

I will be attending a celebratory service at York Minster on the big day (5 July in case you’ve not clocked it) along with a group of our staff. There is also a celebration service at Ripon Cathedral on 29 July with an open invitation to everyone.

The birthday gives us the opportunity to reflect on what the NHS has done for us personally over the course of our lifetimes and, following the Government’s funding announcement, what it will be able to do for us in the coming years.

There will be a strong NHS 70 theme at our Annual Members’ Day on 31 July and I hope to see some of you there.

Sharing stories – how we learn from deaths

At the Board, we welcomed Pamela Hayward-Sampson, Serious incident Investigator, and Sam Marshall, Serious Incidents, Complaints, Claims and Inquest Manager to give us an overview of how we learn from deaths of service users.

Every year we help thousands of people to improve their health and lives and in many cases, to recover from mental ill health. But the sad truth is that some people don’t recover and will die whilst under the care of the NHS. What is important is that we have the time and expertise in place to develop a supportive culture so we can learn from what happened and improve our practice where there are opportunities to do this.

We also had an important briefing from Dr Claire Kenwood, our Medical Director on the recently published report into patient deaths at Gosport Hospital. Asking ourselves, ‘could this happen here?’ we considered a number of the risks identified by the review panel and our approach to issues including raising and responding to concerns, use and dosage of opiates, use of syringe drivers and other related matters. Further work on the key points of learning from the Gosport report will be taken forward through the Quality Committee.

You can read more about our approach to learning from deaths in the June Board paper Mortality Review – Learning from Deaths Item 10 page 98.

Improving healthy food choices

Public health is a particular interest of mine so I was glad to read that we’re taking action to improve the quality of food and drink on our premises and we’ve signed up to NHS England’s scheme to reduce sales of sugar-sweetened beverages. Sounds like we’re making good progress against our plans – read more in Item 8.1 page 89.

Junior doctors share outstanding satisfaction

Dr Claire Kenwood shared some great news this month from the National Education and Training Survey 2017. This is a survey of all foundation year doctors and in our results this year we saw “outstanding satisfaction for delivery of education and team working and high satisfaction for curricula delivery, attitudes, patient safety and care, pastoral care and inter-professional learning opportunities.”

Well done to our fantastic medical directorate who are dedicated to ensuring our medical workforce is well supported.

Patient experience review

Improving our patient experience work is a key priority for the Board so I was pleased to see we’re taking this forward, starting with an independent external review of our patient experience and involvement systems and processes, led by Professor Mark Gamsu at Leeds Beckett University.

The first stage of the work will focus on reviewing how we capture patient experience data at an individual, collective and organisational level and how this is then captured, analysed and acted upon within the organisation.

We look forward to hearing the findings and recommendations of the review in the autumn. Read more in the Director of Nursing’s Report, Item 11 Page 108.

Preventing terrorism – our role

We’ve all seen the horrific consequences of terrorism in different parts of the country – some of us may have been directly affected by them. The question is what can we, as an NHS Trust, do to contribute to preventing terror attacks?

‘Prevent’ is one of four strands of the government’s counter-terrorism strategy, known as Contest. It is designed to support people at risk of joining extremist groups and carrying out terrorist activities. It aims for police and other organisations to build relations across the UK and requires people such as faith leaders, teachers and health professionals to refer any suspicions about people to a local Prevent body.

We’ve been working with staff across the Trust to improve the levels of WRAP training (Workshop to Raise Awareness of Prevent).

WRAP helps staff understand their role within the Prevent strategy, how they can use their expertise and professional judgment to recognise vulnerable individuals who may need support, and what local safeguarding and referral mechanisms are in place.

We noted a significant improvement in the number of staff who’ve now completed this vital training, but there is still more to do to reach our target by September 2018. Our Director of Nursing, Cathy Woffendin, is monitoring this closely and is working with service managers to promote the opportunities to undertake the training..

Finance – reduction in control total

We’ve received notification from NHS Improvement (NHSI) that a reduction of nearly £800,000 has been applied to our control total for 2018/19. This means we now have to achieve a total surplus of £2.5million.

The reduction was in recognition of our achievement of hitting last year’s financial target and has allowed us to create a risk contingency reserve.

Whilst achieving our control total will be a challenge, its good news we’ve been given what is effectively a discount for our previous year’s performance.

Valuing our bank staff

Our bank staff provide a highly valuable service to the Trust. They are a group of knowledgeable and experienced staff who provide a good continuity of care for services – covering shifts and responding to staffing shortages.

In March we appointed former ward manager Sajimon Madathil as Bank Clinical Lead. His main objectives are to improve the experience and quality of bank staff, improve the governance and training arrangements, increase numbers on the bank and support the development of our model of engaging bank workers.

Sajimon has re-introduced the bank staffing forum which provides an opportunity for bank staff to have their voice heard about the challenges and the positive aspect of working in our services.

We’re seeing a growing level of interest in this forum and I’m pleased that the Trust is taking steps to engage with our bank staff to improve their working lives.

Find out more about our Chair Professor Sue Proctor.