Published on: 22 June 2018

Kevin McGee.jpg

Hello everyone - it's the weekend, let's hope it's a great one for us all, whatever we are doing.

One of the things that I am most satisfied about here at ELHT is the way our vision and values are so clearly understood, and actively demonstrated by our staff. They breathe life into our organisation – guiding and inspiring all of our actions and decisions. They help to empower us to be better at what we do and create a great place to work, enabling us to provide the highest quality of care to our patients. Those vision and values were co-produced with our staff and influence everything we do. If you work for us, you will have been appointed at least in part, because you have shown your commitment to them and the ability to apply them.

Respect for people - patients, families and of course, each other is at their heart. I have been a little concerned lately at a couple of instances where people seem to have forgotten that we should all be able to 'expect respect' when we are carrying out our work, even when that work is unpopular. Our IT team are currently implementing the shared printer strategy - a programme of work that will save us thousands of pounds; is very much the right thing to do; but will lead to a bit of inconvenience for those who are used to having a desk top printer. Our estates team have worked really hard to provide additional parking, but there is still a demand for spaces that sometimes exceeds supply. If people park in contravention of the rules (rules which are there to ensure safety) a parking penalty may be applied. In both of these examples, some staff have been disrespected by their colleagues either verbally or on social media, when they are simply doing their job. This is not right in a Trust that prides itself - as we do - on our values and behaviours. We should be supporting our colleagues by promoting positive change and acting with integrity. Please remember to treat your colleagues with respect, and stay true to our core values.

I’m pleased to say there are no end of examples of where we demonstrate the value of putting our patients first. Each month we report in the corporate briefing of our excellent Family and Friends feedback results and the low complaints rates. We receive compliments from patients and their loved ones by so many different routes which is wonderful. Recently we received this glowing 5 Star review via our Facebook page from a very grateful family: “We have had two family members in Blackburn hospital this week. One receiving end of life care, who was looked after with wonderful compassion and respect. The other in A&E after a nasty fall who received excellent emergency care despite it being extremely busy. The staff are clearly under pressure with a lack of space to put people but are absolutely fantastic. Thank you to every single member of staff we had contact with, you are all amazing.” And thank you from me too!

Providing safe, personal and effective care at the times when it is needed the most is vital and I’m so immensely proud to say you do it extremely well. We put a lot of time and effort into improving the quality of our services and our patients experience while they are will us. This month we have produced a Quality Handbook to remind ourselves of how we do that, and how we can maximise on the opportunity to shine bright! There is also a handy reminder of our vision, objectives and values in there too. You may have already seen and read it, if not you can access it either on OLI or by hardcopy available from the Communications Team.

And speaking of shining bright, the weather forecast for the weekend looks fabulous! I hope you manage to get out and top up on your vitamin D levels. Until next time……