Need to know
For #TeamEEAST Last updated: 20 April 2024 at 04:06
Although the recent weather may have suggested otherwise, winter is on its way. Thanks to all who worked last Saturday night when the clocks changed, the added hour always makes everything that bit more challenging for us.
We continue to work in tricky circumstances, I appreciate how frustrating it is for everyone whether its waiting outside ED (sometimes for pretty much an entire shift), the increased volume of calls due to the number of people waiting for us to respond, or our PTS colleagues juggling journeys for our patients. It is especially tough when we cannot give our patients the support that we wish to offer, particularly when we can see they need it, but we can’t respond in a timely way.
We all want things to improve, and I wanted to share some of the work we are doing with our system partners to try and improve the response we provide for our patients.
Access to the stack
This has now gone live in Herts & West Essex and enables us to pass C3 and below calls to our system partners in urgent care, who will help our patients access alternative pathways where appropriate. We will keep you updated on its roll out across the rest of our region.
Advancing practice support
We have carried out several rigorous assessment centres to select advanced practitioners who we are aiming to have in place by mid-December. They will offer clinical supervision and be part of ‘phone a friend’ providing advice surrounding clinical pathways, conveyancing and other clinical queries. We will send out more information on how you can contact them in due course.
Extension of ECAT
We know how successful Hear & Treat is and to extend this we are looking at recruiting more clinicians of varying grades. This will enable patients to have timely access to advice and support and where possible resolve contacts virtually rather than dispatching a response.
C2 patient trial
You may have seen in the news that the West Midlands and London Ambulance Services are trialling enhanced triage for calls categorised as C2, this will mean subdividing into C2a, C2b, C2c, although the response time requirement for all C2s remains the same for ambulance attendance. Whilst this trial is ongoing we are also looking at ways to adopt this process, and will therefore require further expansion of ECAT.
More call handlers
Our number of call handlers continues to grow and it’s great to see the improvements in our call pick up time as a result.
Cohorting guidance circulated
Last week a letter from the NHSE regional team was sent to all acute trusts outlining what their, and our, responsibilities are when a patient arrives as hospital. The letter explained that the responsibility of cohorting lies with the hospital and that new regional escalations will be in place for any ambulance waiting over four hours.
We know that the issue of cohorting and the lengthy handover delays will continue to take time to improve but hopefully as we move in to winter will we start to head in the right direction and plans are continuing to develop and grow around this. Some hospitals are already tackling this, implementing additional support measures such as the use of reservists to support cohorting, or in the case of Southend, erecting temporary structures to support offloading.
Permanent HALO recruitment
The assessment centres for the permanent HALO roles will take place next week, this will see us appoint to these key roles to support the timely handover of all patients and the welfare of our crews.
Whilst there is still much to do, all these initiatives will not only improve the clinical outcomes and experience for our patients but will hopefully improve your own experiences of working at EEAST. We are determined to support you in receiving a rest break and enable you to respond to more patients without having to wait for lengthy periods outside the hospital.
I hope this gives you confidence that we are proactively looking at how we can improve patient care and experience as well as taking into consideration the challenges that you, our people, face every day, and know that we are trying to improve the situation for everyone.
Thank you for the time effort and support that you give to everyone in your care. These trying circumstances can often cause tensions across our teams, with our system colleagues and sometimes even with our patients but please continue to speak kindly and with respect to one another. Kind words cost nothing but mean everything, particularly when our resilience is not as high as normal.
Thank you and take care,
Melissa
Published 3rd November 2022