We Are EEAST Briefing - Thursday 12th August 2021

 

The latest We Are EEAST Briefing and Executive Q & A comes from our Chief Executive, Tom Abell.

Good afternoon everybody, thank you for joining the Exec Q&A this afternoon. For those of you who haven’t been to one of these recently or one of my other briefings, I just wanted to introduce myself as Tom Abell, the new Chief Executive here at EEAST, talking to you today from Waveney.

One of the great things that I’ve been able to do over the last week or so since I’ve started is get out and about and see some of the great work that our teams are doing across the Trust and in our hospitals and working with some of our hospitals around how do we manage the pressures and demands that we’re currently seeing on our services, which are really extreme at the moment. So, I wanted to say a really thank you to all of you who I know are working really hard to keep our patients safe and to provide a good service to our communities, so thank you for everything that you are doing.

I’m going to just say a few words as normal around the leadership message this week and then we’ll have an opportunity to answer any questions that you’ve got. If you have got any questions do pop them in the Q&A box on Teams and I’ll do my best to answer those, and if I can’t, I will take them away and make sure that we get you an answer in due course.

So, as I said, I wanted to say a really big thank you for everybody who has been working so hard. I think, clearly, a really important message is that in these periods of really high demand its important that we do our best to look after ourselves and to protect our own health and wellbeing. So, within the leadership message this week we are putting in some more details and doing some reminders around some of the health and wellbeing resources that are available to all of our people regardless of your role within the Trust.

In particular, the one development that there has been is that we now have access to the Health and Wellbeing Hubs within each of the ICS areas. They will provide an enhanced level, in particular with mental health support, above and beyond what we have historically provided as an organisation, so if you do want to use those services, do go ahead and use them. They’re entirely free to use, they’re entirely confidential and I know that there’s some really, really good resources there in terms of for people to access.

The other thing that we are encouraging people to look at and work within their team and their managers on is accessing charitable funds. So, we do have charitable funds within the Trust. They can be used to help improve your work environment or improve your facilities. So, if there’s any schemes or ideas you’ve got like that, there’s some more details within the leadership brief about how you go about putting in an application for charitable funds and so we can try and help improve your work environment or do something that is going to help lift morale and spirits in this very difficult and tricky time that we are in at this moment.

Obviously, as I’ve said, I’m here in Waveney today, and clearly trying to work through how best do we support the whole organisation and all of you to respond to this demand and try and make the pressure manageable, because I realise that it has been really, really difficult. We are taking some immediate steps in terms of looking at how we can increase resourcing, and we are talking to external partners in terms of how they may be able to support us, as I think I’ve mentioned previously, so particularly with the military and Fire and Rescue Service.

I’m also working with the hospitals in terms of trying to work through plans to improve hospital offload and to make sure that our crews are appropriately supported in each of our ED departments across the patch, and that handover delays are seen as just as critical as any other aspect of patient safety within the hospital setting. So, there’s more work to be done on that, but we’re now starting on that work and starting on that journey.

If there’s anything else you feel that we could be doing as an executive team to support you please do shout, so please do email me on the OCE email address or do use one of these sessions to raise an idea or suggestion because we’re really keen to get your views about what would be most helpful given the demands that we’re seeing.

Hopefully, also everyone who is a learner on one of our apprenticeship programs has seen the communications that came out earlier this week around the award of the Medipro contract. That provides some certainty to our apprentices, given the uncertainty as a result of the OFSTED inspection outcome, and we’re now working with learners and working with Medipro to ensure the smooth handover of those members of staff and also working through the impact of any delays for apprentices and making sure we mitigate those in terms of any financial issues or anything like that. That will be a very individual based conversation with each learner, based on their learning and where they’d got to, but we are committed to doing our very best to make sure nobody is disadvantaged as a result of the delay that has occurred as a result of the OFSTED inspection.

Then finally, just in terms of some good news, is that the team in Longwater have been doing a huge amount of work off their own back to create a wellbeing garden. That’s the first of what may be a number of wellbeing gardens across the Trust in the future, and that will be opening tomorrow. So that will be a good resource and support for our staff and is a really good example of how some of our people have come together to improve their work environment, and also had support from external companies and garden centres and people to make that happen. So, I really look forward to seeing that when I’m over there tomorrow.

I think that’s all I had to say so I will have a go at the Q&A’s.

(Questions below)

I think that’s all the questions I’ve got but thank you again everybody for attending and also for sticking with us for the full hour. It’s really, really great to get your questions, they’re really helpful for me, and I really appreciate your openness and honesty and your ideas and do continue to do that.

As I’ve said, if there is something you wanted to ask or you feel that one of the answers I gave didn’t really answer the question do drop us a line through to the OCE email address and so I can have a look at it and I can answer you more fully or you can ask me further questions if you feel that I didn’t give a full response or got the wrong end of the stick with anything.

So, anyway, I will leave it there. Thank you again everybody for everything you are doing, I really do appreciate it, and it is tough out there, we will get through it together. Yes there is lots to do, but with a team like ours I’m sure we will succeed. So, thank you very much everybody and I will see you all soon.

Thank you.