Published on: 25 October 2018

Kevin McGee Flu Fighter 2018.jpg

Hello everyone, happy Friday! I hope you’ve all had a good week and are ready for the weekend. I’m off on holiday after today, so there’ll be a guest blogger next week.

You’ll all know that for many, many months we’ve been working really hard to improve our performance against the A&E four hour standard. This hasn’t been easy and the different strands of work have required considerable effort from a whole range of different people and teams. Indeed, I think every one of us working at ELHT has, in some way, contributed. This is reflected in our rallying call ‘every minute matters, every person plays a part’.  Although it would be easy to say the emergency standard is an emergency department problem – it isn’t. We are all affected by it and we are all judged by it. And, I think we all do a high five when it goes well and we hit 95%! That 95% has been a bit elusive though, only rarely seen. Until now. It seems, that this sustained effort is starting to deliver sustained improvement. I want to say a big, heartfelt thank you to every one of you for making this happen. Now, we’ve got to keep it going.

Staff satisfaction is really important, not just to the Trust as an employer, but to our patients. They get a better service from people who are happy in their work and feel supported and appreciated. That’s why we are committed to our staff’s health and wellbeing, and to compassionate leadership.  So, I am particularly pleased to sense a lift in staff morale in our ED after what has been an incredibly difficult couple of years. This is the result of having more people; new roles; new solutions; all combined with the long standing commitment, compassion, professionalism and expertise of our staff. While I don’t expect the job to get any easier, I do hope it will be less stressful. For instance, we’ve got 17 more doctors there; ANPs and trainee ANPs; physiotherapy teams; an additional consultant and a commitment to further increase the consultant workforce; and dedicated in-house training for our medical staff, and more.

But that’s not all. Throughout the process there has been support from across the Trust and from various individuals and teams. Every person has played their part. For example, there needs to be a special thanks to the Anaesthetics department who stepped in last year when ED was in need of senior clinical support to provide a dedicated Resus rota. They initially did this for 6 weeks and ended up supporting for over 12 months. This support was invaluable for both our patients and the ED staff and was a great demonstration of staff working outside their comfort zone to work as a team for the good of our patients.  As a Trust, we can’t thrive without this willingness to flex, to stretch, to develop.

This is safe, personal and effective in action. This is the spirit of team ELHT and YOU are team ELHT.

On behalf of the executive directors and the Board, I want to thank you all and ask you to keep doing what you’re doing. It’s working.

Have a great weekend everyone – and a special ‘thank you’ to those staff working during the weekend to make our services available seven days a week.