In preparation for the new financial year, I have been involved in reviewing and renewing a lot of our key organisational documents such as the Board Assurance Framework, Clinical Strategy, People Plan and Quality Strategy. The pages within express how we are constantly striving to improve, learn and develop as an organisation. And I have found, not surprisingly, there is a recurrence of three words: Safe, Personal and Effective.
These three words are deeply embedded in the fabric of the Trust. Truth be told it is almost impossible to miss them no matter where you are, or what you are doing in your everyday working life. One could say it is our organisational DNA and has been the inspiration for many of us to do the impossible and carry on during our very recent difficult times.
So, I thought it would be a good moment to think about how we put those three little words into practice.
You will no doubt be aware of and been involved in the Reset Week. It is a major initiative intended to support the ‘resetting’ of our patient flow and bed capacity in a bid to better understand and ease the ongoing pressures we continue to experience. A key component to this is the safe discharge of our patients to ensure continued movement through our hospitals.
Patient flow touches every part of the Trust and it is vital that we continue to do all we can to help get patients home sooner. Each patient that is occupying a bed when there is no medical reason to do so impacts on all our other services, especially our emergency care pathways. Think of it as a broken-down train on the track which then creates backlog of trains queuing up behind it. It’s an issue that we must all get behind to resolve and keep our services running in the most effective way. Getting patients home sooner is also the best thing for them as it aids a faster and stronger recovery in most cases.
The reset has highlighted the need to begin conversations about discharge with our patients and their families as soon as possible after admission. Being able to fully understand the personal needs and requirements of each individual patient, helps us to return them to their own home or residential setting swiftly and safely. Having those conversations with families early helps to reduce and can even avoid unnecessary delays. This is better for our patients and their loved ones.
I’d also like to highlight what an amazing resource our discharge lounge is, which is designed to safely care for a patient whilst they wait to be transferred out of the hospital. I encourage you to make sure it is included in every eligible patient’s discharge plan. You can find out more about the discharge lounge here.
You will remember that we launched our new Behaviour Framework during our Festival of Inclusion in 2021. The framework explains how adopting and embracing key behaviours helps us to achieve the Trust’s ambition to deliver Safe, Personal and Effective care for our patients and just as important, continues to make ELHT a great place for us all to work.
The framework helps us understand not what we should be doing but how we should approach our work. It’s about how we do things, what we say and how we say it, how we treat others and how we should expect to be treated.
Over the past two years, what we have overwhelmingly seen is colleagues really role modelling positive behaviours, respecting, valuing, and supporting each other and it is based on these observations that the framework was built. Undeniably putting the ‘P’ in Personal!
However, we can also see that, when times are challenging and we are under pressure, that it is easy for frustrations and fatigue to take over and with this, some less than perfect behaviours creep in. Such behaviour is certainly the exception but the impact on colleagues, teams and our patients can be significant. For this reason, I think now is the ideal time to revisit the Behaviour Framework and remind us all why it is important and be clear on what our behaviour expectations are.
If you haven’t already, please do take some time to have a look at the framework and discuss it within your team. You can find resources to support these conversations here.
You’ll have the opportunity to hearing more about the Behaviour Framework over the coming weeks as a podcast series is currently being recorded. Colleagues from across the Trust will be coming together to discuss why they think setting behaviour expectations is important for individuals, teams, the organisation and ultimately our patients. You can listen to all the latest ELHT podcasts by searching ‘ELHT Audio’ on your smart speaker or phone or click here to go to our Apple podcast page. The Executive team will also be talking about this at the next Teams brief so please do tune in to hear more.
Another strong example of the personal element of our DNA is how we embrace the diversity, individuality, and beliefs of our colleagues at ELHT. Tomorrow is the start of the Holy month of Ramadan and many of our Muslim colleagues will be preparing to observe the fast - Ramadan Kareem to you all! For 30 days, those fasting will refrain from eating and drinking from dawn to dusk, with not even a drop of water to quench their thirst. Fasting is a physical and spiritual experience requiring a great deal of preparation and to make sure those fasting at ELHT are fully supported, Imam Fazal from our Chaplaincy and Spiritual Services Team has created a briefing for managers. It is full of helpful information and explains the importance of Ramadan and the significance of fasting. I encourage everyone to have a look if they can.
It has developed into a wonderful tradition now that we hold a ‘I’m not a Muslim but I will fast for one day’ challenge, providing an opportunity to experience fasting and show fellowship with Muslim friends and colleagues.
This year, fasting colleagues have a choice of where they would like to break their fast, either at home via Teams or by visiting the deli bar at Park View Offices, to enjoy traditional prayers and to eat as a group. The evening meal will be, once again, generously prepared by Farzana and Akhlaq Hussain – Thank you! And for those of you who have taken part before, you will know what a delicious treat this is! If you would like to take part, then please contact the Diversity and Equality Team.
I started this blog by talking about how we are constantly striving to improve, learn and develop as an organisation and that is where our effective component really comes into play, and can be especially demonstrated through our digital transformation journey.
This week we hit a major milestone in the eLancs programme to implement a new Electronic Patient Record (EPR) system. The Future State Validation event presented the fruits of months of labour and planning with a first look at the system. The workflows which will create ELHT’s EPR have now been successfully signed off and will enable us to provide safer and more effective care for patients.
The professionalism, knowledge, and commitment from everyone involved, from IT and clinicians to the nursing and clerical teams has been outstanding. I’m immensely proud of you for keeping it personal with our patients at the front and centre of every decision made. It hasn’t been easy and you have gone above and beyond to keep everything on track.
There will be plenty of opportunities for everyone to see the new system in action over the coming months. Roadshows, walkarounds, drop-in sessions and more are planned to give you a chance to see how it works, try it out and ask questions. Trust-wide training begins in September and it’s vital that you attend, so please keep an eye out for updates.
You will have seen the significant national media this week pertaining to the second Ockenden report, which looks at major care failings in maternity services at Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital Trust. I know the standing our maternity services have with the National Team and I was pleased to undertake a virtual quality walk-a-round this week for our Antenatal services at Burnley General Teaching Hospital. The positive culture and visible leadership, together with the great multidisciplinary working was very evident. The team clearly provide safe, personal and effective care. Congratulations to them.
This week I’ve also attended the opening of the ‘Hideaway Garden’ on our Burnley site. Created by colleagues in the Community Division and with the brilliant help from the Estates Team, the garden is a beautiful facility enabling safe, personal and effective care to be delivered in a therapeutic setting. Again, well done to all those involved!
I hope these examples have provided you with a sense of how important those three little words are to us all. That they are not just words on our walls, they are foundation stones on which we build our working days. We all demonstrate these values in everything we do for our patients, their loved ones and for our colleagues. It is in our DNA.
Have a wonderful weekend,
Martin