Friday 13 October! I wonder how many of us have spent the day avoiding black cats, walking under ladders or breaking mirrors?
Improvement has been a big theme of the week. You may have seen the headlines in the local papers about breast screening. ELHT are working in partnership with other Lancashire Health Trusts to raise awareness of the importance of screening. This is because in many parts of Lancashire uptake of routine screening is low. Breast cancer is the most common type of cancer in women in Lancashire, but it is also one of the most treatable, particularly when detected early. So if you are reading this and you have received an invitation, I’d like to encourage you to please attend. The service is free, fast and available locally. If you follow social media, there is a hashtag for the campaign #bescreened which will have lots of facts and figures about the importance of breast screening.
Yesterday the Trust had its official launch of a 5-year partnership with DisabledGo. Chairman, Professor Eileen Fairhurst, attended the event and received a plaque to commemorate the partnership.
DisabledGo provides comprehensive accessibility guides to make it easier for people living with a whole range of disabilities to navigate their way to all areas of our two main hospitals. A team of volunteers from DisabledGo visited, assessed and created detailed accessibility information for ALL our departments, wards and services. We were also delighted to see our two local Healthwatch CEO’s, Sheralee Turner-Birchall and Andy Griffiths supporting the event.
You can also visit the DisabledGo website here, to see for yourself all the fantastic guidance, information and photos it holds. Having the ‘app’ on our website will go a long way towards improving the physical journey our patients with disabilities have to take to attend appointments and visit our hospital sites.
I mentioned last week that Roy Lilley was visiting the Trust. Here’s a photo of Roy, myself and Jane Butcher our Staff Guardian.
Roy was keynote speaker at our Engaging Managers Programme celebration event and it was great to hear what he had to say about the NHS and how change is not only important, but vital. Through the Engaging Managers Programme new and existing managers gain key practical knowledge and skills to really effect change and to go on to empower their own teams. The first cohort of managers have implemented 15 improvement programmes. Examples of the projects include the introduction of staff engagement champions, supporting patients to avoid long hospital stays, mental health first aid and improving the delivery of patient notes to clinics. Cohorts two and three are under way and I look forward to telling you all about their progress and exciting new improvement projects.
And finally, this week I was asked to present at the North West Finance Directors Conference. Chief Executive and Finance Directors from across the North West attended with one clear goal - to support and develop the finance, informatics and procurement staff in our organisations. Improvement – financial or otherwise - is incredibly important in the delivery of excellent patient care and my presentation focused on how we, at ELHT, are developing a culture of collective and compassionate leadership to drive improvement and even better care. As we say in our Trust "Together we can make a difference"
As ever, thanks to all of you for ongoing hard work and commitment. Have a great weekend.
Best wishes
Kevin