Hello everyone. Damian here. Hope you’re having a good week.
One of the best things about my new role as Acting Chief Executive is the number of opportunities I have to see some of the great work going on around the Trust. This was most definitely the case this week when I got to spend time with several of our services at Burnley. My visit began with the Open Day at the Rainbow Children’s Development Centre where I joined the team for a fascinating tour of the facilities, including the amazing stimulation room.
Then it was a pleasure to meet our new midwife sonographers who have been appointed recently and who are able to scan ladies with any concerns during their pregnancy; a great service, great staff, highly trained and highly motivated. Next stop was the Fetal Medicine Unit where consultant obstetrician Mr Martin Maher and the team gave me great insight into their pioneering work on placental scanning. It means more babies are being born safely and the team have been able to greatly reduce the number of stillborn children in our area during the past 2 years.
While at Burnley, I also met Patricia ‘Trish’ Knight, one of our hard-working, dedicated and passionate volunteers. What struck me is just how closely she works with the ward team in the hospital, how passionate she is about safe, personal, effective care as all our staff are, what a great service she provides, and how we are so lucky to have so many volunteers like Trish. Volunteers’ Week is coming up (1-7 June) and it’s a great opportunity to celebrate the efforts of our hundreds of volunteers and the great work of all volunteers.
As you all know, there’s a lot of work going on every day at East Lancashire Hospitals that I want you to know about, so many dedicated staff and high achieving services that deserve recognition. That’s one of the main reasons I’ve started a personal social media account on Twitter (@drdamianriley)
I want to draw your attention to an important new campaign being launched to raise awareness about dementia research. The likelihood is we all know someone who suffers from dementia, or someone who is or who has been a carer for a family member or friend or neighbour with dementia.
We all want to think that research can be done to help finds treatments or preventions. But the numbers of patients, carers, and professionals involved in dementia research is still generally very low. This new awareness campaign aims to increase the amount of research being done on dementia. It is being launched to give information to health care professionals, patients, and their carers on how they might be able to get involved in some sort aspect of research. Watch the video for more details.
Finally, it’s a bank holiday weekend which means an extra day of rest and relaxation for some. But I’m acutely aware that the majority of our services in hospital and the community operate seven days a week, meaning we’ll have hundreds of staff on duty throughout the weekend and on Monday, working round the clock to manage the intense demand for NHS services. Thank you to you all.
Until next week….