I’m starting the first blog of the year today in much the same fashion as I ended the last one of 2024 – acknowledging the issues we’re facing and being clear about everything we have to achieve in the year ahead.
Regular readers will hopefully recognise my natural style is to be open, honest and transparent and one of the huge benefits of working in this part of the world is that people generally say it as they see it too – and that undoubtedly suits me.
Before I go any further, it would be remiss of me not to say a quick ‘Happy New Year’ from both myself and the wider Trust to colleagues, patients, visitors, partners and our varied and diverse communities across East Lancashire too.
I genuinely hope people were able to enjoy the festive season and all it brings, Christmas itself for those who mark it and the school holidays for those with younger children and teens. I will add here that I know the snow will have provided an added bonus for some families who embrace impromptu winter activities – but it brings its own challenges to the Trust as you would imagine.
I will come back to that.
It would be my wish that colleagues, in particular and without exception, were able to find some downtime in amongst it all whilst accepting the season brings enormous pressures on people and services, which we have to manage no matter the date. I am grateful to everyone who worked to care for patients during this time, noting that this may have come at detriment to precious personal moments with family and friends.
Of course, January and winter as a whole is a difficult time for the entire health and social care system and that includes everyone at ELHT. I have said before that the effective running of the Trust requires a true partnership between colleagues, patients, visitors and partners and when the pressure is on it’s a simple fact that each element of that group has to dig really deep.
The demand for urgent and emergency care, bolstered even further than normal by seasonal respiratory illness including ‘flu and Covid, as well as extreme temperatures, snow and ice, has and continues to be intense across the country and I know you will have seen it covered in the news.
ELHT continues to be one of the busiest A&E departments both regionally and nationally – often by some considerable margin – and in many ways I am really proud of how we are coping with the strain. I include the caveat ‘in many ways’ because I would always acknowledge the impact overcrowding and excessive demand has on patients, no matter how hard or effectively we work to care for people as a team.
And we are caring for people, I am convinced of that, albeit we’d all concede it isn’t perfect at the moment or, at times, as any of us would wish. That doesn’t detract from the fact we’re doing our best in very difficult circumstances indeed. I have referenced many times before that when all clinical spaces and cubicles are full, we begin to utilise any and all space available to us. That includes our corridors, which is a last resort and trumped only by closing our doors, turning people away and saying we’re full, which we would never do but is the next logical step when you run completely out of space.
Please be assured that wherever patients are, we are working hard to be there, review, assess and support – and we are constantly looking for and implementing ways to improve, create more space and deploy more people to see more patients in the department.
To this point, I’d like to share a card we received this week from a colleague at North West Ambulance Service which said: “We bring more patients here than to any other hospital in the North West and you still don’t hold us outside. You all do an amazing job, thank you.”
We have also seen disproportionate numbers of patients needing to be admitted with ‘flu compared to the average for Lancashire and South Cumbria, which presents additional and complex challenges including how we manage infection prevention control to curtail it from spreading across our sites.
It really is a team effort including everyone in urgent and emergency care, colleagues on wards and in the community and the families and loved ones we rely on to help us. It should go without saying, but please only attend A&E if you have medical needs that are life threatening – otherwise NHS 111 has clinicians who can immediately guide you to the most appropriate place for help, including GP surgeries and pharmacies.
Let me say thank you to everyone who is working so hard each and every day. I know we are creaking under the January strain, but together we will get through this, as we do every year.
I will close by mentioning a couple of colleagues specifically who I think prove this point beyond any doubt and I will steal a headline I saw this week when I say ‘not all heroes wear capes’. The sentiment that when bad things happen there are always people that run towards it, rather than away, also applies.
The first was shared with me by Jo Heffernan, one of our brilliant Nurse Endoscopists, who took the time to tell me about the exceptional efforts the team made to get into work in the bad weather. Jo singled out Staff Nurse Anna Caffery in particular who has worked for the Trust for numerous years and set off to work on Monday before 5am for her shift in a bid to beat the snow.
After a small collision in her car, she then walked six miles to take a bus – and when it wasn’t running she flagged down a passing driver in a 4x4 vehicle for a lift.
Anna eventually arrived at 9.15am for her shift. Jo’s email ended with the assertation ‘WHAT A WOMAN!’ and, honestly, I just couldn’t agree more.
Similarly three of our district nurses in Burnley were also determined not to let snow get in the way of seeing patients either, even when many roads were impassable by care. Suzanne Heywood, Amber Alderson and Lauren Ingham, who are all based at St Peter’s Centre, simply set off on foot to see their patients, clocking up over 40,000 steps! You can read the full story in the Burnley Express here – but I was delighted to see they had been treated to breakfast and lunch on their travels.
Colleagues in the midwifery team in Burnley also praised our 4x4 drivers in the Trust who are always out and about in poor weather to keep the Trust and its services quite literally on the road. They posted on social media: “A huge thank you to @community4x4response who helped us get to work in the snow #notallheroeswearcapes
Elsewhere, outside of the Trust’s services, an off duty nurse who had apparently just finished a night shift at Burnley was praised and thanked by the family of a man injured in an accident. She pulled over at the scene to support him as he was waiting for an ambulance and left her coat in the process. There’s a quip in there involving heroes, capes and coats I think, but I will simply send my love and admiration to this anonymous colleague and hope she reads it. What a selfless thing to do on a cold morning after work.
This is merely a snapshot of the level of sheer determination, dedication and commitment demonstrated by colleagues when we’re up against it as a Trust and a team. I continue to be grateful to be surrounded by amazing people who in the darkest moments of winter and in life absolutely show us the light. Thank you, it is appreciated and valued perhaps more than you will ever know.
Martin