Published on: 18 October 2019

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Hello everyone

As another working week draws to a close it’s nice to be able to reflect back on some good progress.

Flu vaccination is progressing really well – many thanks to Phil Denney and his excellent team for their work. We have already immunised 25 per cent of staff, which is ahead of our plans for this time of year. Great work!

Well done and many thanks go to Tracey, Sharon and Christine, three of our Advanced Clinical Practitioners (pictured above) based in Accrington Minor Injuries Unit. On Tuesday this week I had the pleasure of awarding our Employee of the Month to them. Not long ago a gentleman collapsed with cardiac arrest on the pavement outside the Accrington Hospital site, and Tracey, Sharon and Christine skilfully undertook CPR and resuscitated him. The great news is that has progressed with a really good recovery since then. It was really touching when he later came back in and visited the team to thank them.  Another life saved, well done!

Little reminder if I may: If you haven’t had a chance to do it yet, please do take five minutes to complete your NHS Staff survey – it might be one of those emails that has accidentally ended up in the ‘deleted’ folder and has the title ‘NHS Staff Survey 2019’. We are currently at 19 per cent completion, which is above the national average for response rate. However we are not the best in the country and we should aim for the best! Even if you just want things to stay as they are, or if you have good feedback or bad feedback to give, please do fill it in.

It was great this week to welcome the President and Vice President of the Royal College of Physicians who came to look round the medical wards of the Trust. They had asked to come and see ELHT because of the reputation we have gained nationally for quality improvement, particularly due to the fabulous QI work by Dr John Dean. During their visit the Royal College team had meetings with senior clinical staff, junior doctors, the Executive team and so on. They gave us really good feedback at the end of their visit, praising ELHT for many aspects of the care we give and the way we work together in multidisciplinary teams. It was a real endorsement of all the improvement we have done over the last seven years, and to get such feedback from the Royal College makes us all very proud.  My thanks go to everyone in Medicine and Emergency Care Division for their help with this visit.

Monday was AHPs Day and our staff grabbed the opportunity to come together and celebrate being part of the AHP family.  There were numerous photos on social media of our AHPs contributing to the special day and we posted this photographic celebration highlighting the numerous AHP staff who do so much for our patients.

Final thought – what are you doing this weekend? I might take up meditation. It’s better than sitting down doing nothing J

Enjoy the weekend and thank you for your excellent work as ever.

Best wishes, Damian