Thank you to everyone for coping so well, so professionally and with such patience during the heatwave this week.
I very much appreciate the effort you’re all making during the hot weather and want to thank everyone who helped to distribute cooled water, drinks and ice-lollies to staff, patients and visitors. (Estates Divisional Manager) Jimmy Maguire tells me that we distributed over 1,000 lollies on Thursday alone.
On Wednesday, I had the great pleasure to award a long service award to Susan Huddleston, who currently works in General Office and who has worked for the NHS in Blackburn for 50 years. I suggested to Susan that she captures many of her memories of good times she has had and changes she’s seen by writing up some memoirs!
I ‘called’ in to Switchboard (or to give its official name, the telecommunication centre) at RBTH on Tuesday. It’s amazing that each operator handles up to 100 calls per hour and the team receives thousands of calls every day – a real NHS hotline! Despite such a busy round the clock workload, I always find the team helpful.
Another 24/7 function is our health records department, working day and night, filing, retrieving, tidying and archiving records, picking them for next week’s clinics and much more. It’s a huge logistical task with 60,000 records handled each month, 700,000 per year. Roll on electronic patient records to make everyone’s lives easier! On a related note and more hot news -congratulations to Sue Elliston and our Outpatients service which was recently awarded a Public Sector Paperless Award for the success of the trust’s digital Patient Portal.
We said thank you, best wishes, goodbye and good luck to Jonathan Wood this week, after 10 years’ service as our Director of Finance, looking after the finances with an eagle eye. Jonathan moves on to offer his services to Lancashire Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, and we will work closely with him going forward, building relationships between the two trusts. Fortunately, Michelle Brown has kindly stepped into the hot seat as our Interim Director of Finance.
Praise also to our latest Employee of the Month – Maintenance Engineer Nathan Cowburn – whose professionalism and quick thinking prevented an emergency situation at BGTH from escalating. Back in April, the heat was on Nathan after he spotted a fire at the Lancashire Women and Newborn Centre. Quick as a flash, Nathan raised the alarm, grabbed a fire extinguisher and prevented a significant fire from developing. Well done, Nathan.
And, finally, joke of the week which has been given to me by Jane McNicholas, one of our Breast Surgeons (so all criticism to her, please).
“What did the Llama say when it had to leave the zoo?”
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Alpaca my bags…..
Have a good weekend and thanks again for everything you’ve done this week.