Update from Anthony Marsh - 20th November 2014

The Trust is about to take a huge step towards advancing the care we give to patients, with the rollout of our new trauma equipment. This equipment, which was paid for by the transitional funding we received from commissioners earlier this year, is all ready to be delivered to stations and senior locality managers are organising training programmes, which will be given locally. The new equipment includes the EZ-IO intraosseous infusion system, trauma packs, traction splints and a new glucose meter and there will be a series of articles over the next few weeks in Need to Know to tell you more about them. This not only improves the care we can give to patients, but is also a great development opportunity for you to learn new skills. 

On Friday we celebrated our Trust Excellence Awards, held in Hertfordshire, where more than 270 guests saw 120 awards given, from Chief Officer Commendations to outstanding contribution awards. It was fantastic to see so many of you there and I was immensely proud to present some of the awards. You can read more about it in a separate article and catch up on the tweets from the night on the Trust’s official Twitter account. We have received extremely positive feedback about the night, so I want to thank everyone who attended and made it such a brilliant event. 

Also this week one of our duty locality officers, Phil, won an outstanding manager award from the Ambulance Leadership Forum and the Association of Ambulance Chief Executives. I was delighted to see Phil win this award at the ceremony in Leeds and would like to congratulate him for this recognition of his hard work and dedication to patient care. 

This week we have been preparing for Monday’s industrial action and have been working with UNISON colleagues to ensure our patients still receive a safe service. As with October’s action, more information has been published separately and there is a Q&A document available. I have every hope that together we will find a balance again between making your opinions heard and still maintaining our emergency response to patients.

Published on 20th November 2014