I know the blog can become a bit of a run-down of the week at times – but today I am going to focus on three pieces of great news and feedback that I think are fundamental to everything we do and are trying to achieve at East Lancashire Hospitals.
The first involves improvements in the team caring for older people – both in hospital and in the community, the second is about an award for our brilliant paediatric team and the third relates to the ongoing implementation of the electronic patient record (EPR).
Between these three areas I think we probably have a connection with every colleague and reach almost every family in our community, so they’re ‘biggies’ so far as I am concerned. That they’re all rooted in external appraisal of the Trust’s performance and our unwavering commitment to continuous improvement is an added bonus for me.
I’ll take them in order.
The Medicine For Older People (MFOP) division has received a very positive and well deserved set of results in the most recent General Medical Council (GMC) survey, which asks junior doctors and medical trainees how well they feel they are supported to develop by colleagues at the Trust.
The group was asked to rate the team’s performance on a range of things including overall satisfaction with their training, their workload, level of supervision and the quality of teaching provided. As it is repeated annually, it’s a great tool to track improvements and decide where the next focus should be.
I was delighted to see that medical trainees really recognised and rated the support they were receiving and that clear improvements had been made over the past three years. The highlights for me included:
- Overall satisfaction which was at 72% in 2021 and is almost 89% in the 2023 return
- Teamwork at 71% in 2021 and more than 85% in 2023
- Adequate experience at 69% in 2021 and now at over 87%
- Educational supervision from 87% to an immense 95%
- Feedback which was 60% in 2021 and is now 83%
In recognising the achievement, I want to specifically mention Pearl Matthew, Kathryn Thomson and the MFOP directorate manager Catherine Taurozzi, who have been brilliant in building relationships and making sure that we have been listening to and acting on concerns and ideas during the last few years.
But the truth is that it has been a team effort and this success is a reflection across the whole of MFOP – and that includes consultants, nurses and, not least, the junior doctors themselves, in both hospital and community settings, who have worked so effectively together.
This type of thing helps to showcase the Trust as an excellent place to work and develop and I hope it will help us as we continue to try and attract the very best medical, clinical and non-clinical people to work for us.
It is brilliant news, a significant achievement and an excellent barometer of the great training that is being provided. Well done and thanks to everyone who contributed, it really is appreciated.
At this point, before I move on, I should just quickly acknowledge the ongoing contributions and dedication of all junior doctors across the Trust – and not just in MFOP – after further industrial action took place this week in a dispute with the Government over pay.
This is the latest ‘strike’ to impact on services – with consultants taking industrial action yesterday and today for the same reason – and I have said many times that whilst we respect the right of colleagues to do this, we also have to be open that it causes disruption when we lose critical members of the team in this way.
Thank you to everyone who is holding the fort, coming into work to do extra shifts or cover extra duties – it is paramount to our ability to minimise delays for patients and their families and we simply couldn’t cope without you.
Back to the second of my three things, which is recognition of the general paediatric team at Royal Blackburn Teaching Hospital who have been awarded a ‘PAFTA’ – which stands for the Paediatric Awards for Training Achievements and is presented by the Greater Manchester and Lancashire School of Paediatrics.
In their feedback the judges described the service as a ‘busy, well organised unit which has lots of clinic experience – far more than any other centre’. They were also impressed that ‘complex pathology is well supported’.
In their letter the PAFTA Committee added: “You have been nominated by your trainees for encapsulating values to innovate, influence, include and lead. Thank you for all your hard work for trainees and patients in the North West.”
I am delighted that these two things represent a balanced commitment to the youngest and oldest people in our communities and the idea that ‘starting well’ and ‘aging well’ leads to improved health outcomes for local people.
I am beyond proud to hear we are excelling and improving our approach in both.
Thank you to everyone who is contributing across all teams and settings including community colleagues who have such a huge part to play in our success.
Lastly – would a week even be a week in ELHT if we didn’t reference progress around the electronic patient record (EPR)?
On Tuesday, we were visited by the Vice President of the technology company behind the system, who was interested to see how it was going and what we had learned from ‘go live’ so far. She visited teams across a range of settings to understand the local impact for them and how they were feeling after just a few weeks of getting to grips with a radically different approach to work.
I have said before there is still much to do to get up to speed on this, but it was good to hear that most people felt they were making progress and becoming more familiar with it.
The feedback from her was that the ‘go live’ here was among the best they had seen which was positive in itself.
That said, it’s clear the next three to six months will be key in making sure we have the most effective system possible – and I appreciated everyone’s continued efforts in managing this amongst everything else.
Before I finish, I’ll just add a note about ELHT’s ‘Employee of the Month’ for June – Sumayyah Asghar who works in audiology. Sumayyah was nominated by a patient who really valued the way she explained everything so clearly, was so thorough in her work and spent time ensuring he understood what was happening.
It was great to thank Sumayyah for her approach personally but also to see everyone in audiology which is one of those teams which can go unnoticed but is hugely important to the Trust.
Thanks for making me so welcome and for everything you do. Together I am proud of the difference we are making to people’s lives – not just in what we do, but how we do it – and our ever-present determination to get better all the time.
If you have any feedback, ideas, suggestions – or anything at all you’d like to say – do get in touch. I always love to hear from you.
Martin