The festive season is always a moment where most people remain faithful to annual customs and tradition and for East Lancashire Hospitals that includes a message from the Chief Executive and Chair on the eve of Christmas and all that it brings for colleagues, patients and our wider community as a whole.
And so here we are, reflecting on another year, thanking everyone for all they have done and sending our best wishes for a happy and healthy Christmas and New Year when it comes.
This type of message can sometimes feel routine, obligatory and glib, but when we look back across 2023 and everything we have faced and often overcome, the truth is that saying a simple thank you can never be enough.
As with every organisation within the NHS, the ELHT family has wrestled with some difficult issues this year and none more so than the huge and relentless pressures on our services. This is always observed first in our urgent and emergency pathways, but it is important to remember that providing safe, personal and effective care is a team sport and it requires everyone in all services and all settings to pull together at all times.
We have both spent time in A&E at Royal Blackburn Teaching Hospital and in the Urgent Care Centre at Burnley General Teaching Hospital over the course of the year and we have seen for ourselves the challenging environment they present for colleagues, patients and their families. In Blackburn especially, where the emergency department is one of the busiest in the country, the team have faced unprecedented demands and broken records for the number of people attending for treatment throughout 2023. On just one day this month we counted 825 people, which is quite a phenomenal figure for anyone to cope with.
Of course, we know this impacts on the experience of our patients and their families and exacerbates what is already a difficult and anxious time. It is also often not the level of care that anyone would aspire to provide or receive at very pressured times and we know this weighs heavy on the conscious of colleagues who do their best to remain focused on what they can do as opposed to what they cannot.
As part of this it is incumbent on us and important to recognise the team across the Trust are always doing their best and this is good enough on any given day – and the impact on their health and well being of feeling like they are not doing their job well is huge.
This includes urgent and emergency care as well as the myriad of people you often cannot see or even begin to imagine – not least within the community where colleagues are working in people’s homes and other settings to support them to remain safe in their own bed and out of hospital.
Every member of the ELHT family is equally important to our success, whether clinically facing or in roles behind the scenes which keep the show on the road. It is the case that everyone plays their part, everyone contributes, everyone feels the pressure and everyone struggles to cope on the busiest and most difficult days.
It is well documented that life within the NHS is tough at the moment. We have real financial challenges which are biting hard and the requirement to bring down our spending is in advance of anything we have ever experienced before. It can feel relentless on all fronts, with no shortage of complex problems to solve, and it’s important that whilst the needs of our patients and their families always come first, we watch out for each other too.
This week we have launched our mental health campaign which simply says ‘I know you’re not OK, let’s talk’. In line with this sentiment, we are asking ‘how are you?’ wherever we go at the moment.
On Tuesday we got senior leaders together for a routine meeting but started with a check in on this basis and the answer really was a tonic for the soul. Colleagues acknowledged it was tough, that it had been a difficult year and ‘stupidly busy’, but they were keen to remember everything that had been achieved too. This included big challenges such as removing the crumbling or ‘bubbly’ concrete known as RAAC from our buildings, implementing a new electronic patient record (EPR) which was one of the biggest changes we can remember and finding improvements across a range of issues, even when it felt impossible.
The general sense from colleagues was that it was difficult but we were undoubtedly making things better and there was a positive trajectory not only in place but progressing too. This is the spirit of ELHT and we are incredibly proud to be a part of it.
There was some more philosophical debate too, including learning from historic leaders such as Marcus Aurelias to manage personal resilience and accept things that were in or out of your personal control. We also discussed psychological safety in these difficult times and how the culture of an organisation can provide impetus to be open, courageous and, perhaps most importantly, ‘human’.
As we start to think about bringing 2023 to a close and begin to formulate our hopes for 2024, this sense that there is always something we can do, that we remain in control and that together we will make progress has to feature highly for colleagues but also patients and our community as a whole.
If you are waiting for treatment that is impacting on your quality of life or you need to come in for care, please know that we are doing everything we can, each and every day, to make that happen as quickly as possible.
This week and after Christmas we will experience more industrial action by members of the British Medical Association (BMA) and this will include hundreds of doctors who are normally working across ELHT. Whilst we respect the right of all colleagues to strike, the truth is it will lead to a reduced level of clinical capacity across our services and some procedures will be cancelled as a result. We are sorry that is happening and be assured we’ll do everything we can to catch up in the New Year.
This will put extra strain on everyone at ELHT over Christmas and New Year and well into 2024 at a time when we’re already busy and people are running close to empty. Please help us, as ever, by only attending if you have an urgent or life-threatening concern and when you’re in or around our services remember to be kind as colleagues run low on energy after the most relentless year.
To everyone working, thank you for giving up your time with your family and loved ones to care for others. It is appreciated and your contribution and sacrifice does not go unseen or valued.
If you do have time off, enjoy it – whether you celebrate Christmas from a religious perspective or just enjoy your own customs and traditions that come from the downtime it provides. Time with family and friends cannot be underestimated in the restorative process and the small things we do together really do make a difference to our wellbeing.
On this note, it would be remiss of us not to finish with a message of hope for everyone who has suffered and continues to struggle mentally and physically from the effects of the ongoing war in Ukraine or the Israel Palestine conflict. We continue to see the most horrific images across the media and at this festive time it is right to send our love and heartfelt wishes for peace and goodwill to all.
Martin Hodgson, Chief Executive
Shazad Sarwar, Chair