Need to know
For #TeamEEAST Last updated: 24 April 2024 at 06:16
Looking after our patients
As we move into another busy winter period our focus, as ever, is on patient safety. A system under pressure brings with it elements of risk, and it is important that the risk across our region is shared. We are working with commissioners and NHS colleagues to ensure that we recognise and manage this together.
Over the last few months, we have all experienced increased pressure whatever your role. I want to personally thank every one of you for all you have done and continue to do. You have shown dedication and a determination to continue to deliver outstanding care to our patients every single day. You are all making a difference.
I also want to thank you for continuing to report incidents when things don’t quite go to plan. Whether it’s due to an extended response time to reach a patient, a patient deteriorating in the queue outside a hospital, a drug error, or an injury to yourself, it is vital that you keep letting us know when things go wrong. It is only by reporting an incident that we can truly understand the risks to our staff and patients and find ways to prevent similar things from happening again. You can find out more about incident reporting here.
Whilst we are under so much pressure, it’s important to recognise that we are all more susceptible to error. None of us likes to make a mistake; it feels awful, but we are only human. When there are competing priorities to balance, and we are tired, we need to think more about our decision making and ask, is what I am about to do the right thing and the safe thing?
Genuine errors happen and we must learn from them and support those involved.
If we continue with our commitment to providing outstanding patient care, report incidents, and learn from those times when things don’t go to plan, our patients will be in safe hands.
Christmas
The emergence of the Omnicrom variant has highlighted that the pandemic is unfortunately very much still part of our daily life, and highlights the importance of making sure we’ve had our booster vaccine so we can protect ourselves, our loved ones and our communities.
As the festive season approaches, we know many of you are keen to celebrate with each other. However, we must do all we can to protect ourselves and those that we serve.
Gatherings of large staff groups are likely to increase the risk of transmitting the virus in the workplace and increase the chance of you getting ill. Unfortunately, we have seen this happen recently, so we have put together some guidance which we hope will help you make safer choices.
Putting our winter plans into practice
Part of our winter preparations includes making sure that we increase the number of emergency ambulances operating over the festive period. During the early days of COVID, non-clinical drivers (NCDs) played an important role in helping us get more ambulances out and about to our patients.
Recently, we have written to former staff members and invited them to consider returning to undertake an NCD role over the next few months. In addition, we are working to recruit leavers from other emergency services, who are qualified and experienced in using blue lights, to join our group of bank NCDs. These measures will help increase the number of emergency ambulances we can run while our recruitment strategy starts to take effect.
This is part of a range of actions we are taking across the Trust to help meet the needs of our communities over the coming months, with progress being made to:
I recognise that there is more to do. We will have further updates on these areas over the course of the coming weeks, both through these messages and on the Executive Q&A sessions each Thursday if you’d like to find out more.
Please stay safe and protect your family, patients and colleagues.
Best wishes
Juliet Beal
Director of Nursing, Clinical Quality and Improvement
2nd December 2021