COVID-19 update from Chief Executive

 

Video transcript: Dorothy Hosein video on 19th March 

Hello colleagues!

I wanted to update you in these very challenging times with COVID19, I know you are getting a lot of information as I am nationally, newspapers, media ect. But I wanted to zone in in-terms of what we are doing as a Trust.  Firstly I would like to thank all of you in these difficult times and the amazing work you are doing day I and day out serving our patients, I know we are a 999 service 24/7 and your working tirelessly to support patients and also know you give some great comfort to people particularly in these times where people will continually ask you for advice around what’s going on.

So I wanted to update you on where we are as I said there is a lot of information coming out on a daily basis, we get national information mid afternoon and what we have to do is actually have a look at that and see how that affects us and we are going to translate that into terms of how we are going to keep this business going and sustainable, bear with us with the timing around that, as I say communications mid-afternoon and hope we will get this on Need to Know certainly by the following morning.

There are a lot of things concerning you right now, I have heard from many of you and my exec team have heard from many of you around supplies, now as PPE as you know there has been a lot of guidance that has been issued on this recently is so important for your welfare and that of all patients. We have PPE in all of our stations, we are working tirelessly to ensure that supplies are kept up. However, what I would ask of you is that you are very prudent in the use of PPE and how we take care of how much we use. That’s really important as it’s a national issue in terms of how much we have and what we want to make sure is supplies never runs out and that’s very very important.

The other important information that will come out to you in the next couple of days and will be firmed up on is the conditions and actions around isolation, that’s very very important and of course we want to make sure that your well being at all times is a priority.  We have a number of ways which we communicate with you, Need to Know is very important and so please check that on a daily basis. I as you know and many of my senior team engage with you with open sessions, Airs & Shares where you’ve shared with us something that was concerning you, good practice you wanted to share. We are going to miss being able to do this as you know we are in this containment phase and a phase where we all need to look at how much social contact we have. I certainly will miss being out there with you, however, what we will be doing is a number of video’s on a weekly basis, I hope to communicate with you early week and end of week, around what we’ve learnt, what we’ve heard actions that we are taking, but also want to make sure we hear from you, your questions are absolutely key, keep them coming and we also have the FAQ’s page, please use that, you also have the office of the Chief exec available to you so that’s really important.

What I would say is we don’t have all the answers right now as we are in this unchartered territory but what we are going to do is make as much sense of the guidance and guidelines that come out as quickly as possible and make sure that we are a safe service and accessible for our patients and that we optimise everything at this critical time.  As you know for your families and your friends and relatives, we’re actually all anxious, I’m anxious, your anxious we’re all anxious for what matters is that we deal with this very difficult situation together, as I said earlier these are very challenging times and in uncharted territory and to say really we are all anxious, I’m anxious for my family, anxious for my friend as you are. However here at EEAST we are a team and this is a time to test our team working because we are all going to have to pull together as we move forward as I said earlier we haven’t got all the answers at this stage, we need to continuously keep working through and it is a daily mission to do that. I want to assure you, however, that your wellbeing and that all of you and our patients is our that we can y priority and as I said earlier I want to hear from you, any questions anything that we can help you with, please please get in touch. I’ve had quite a bit of email traffic in the last couple of days but as I mentioned earlier put it on FAQ’s and we will post some of those that we can share.  Please take the best possible care and whilst your doing your business go about is using the guidelines is essential.

I look forward to speaking to you in the next couple of days.  In the meantime if there is anything urgent that I need to bring to your attention you will hear from us on a daily briefing.

Thank you

Dorothy

 

Published 19th March 2020