Published on: 11 October 2019

Staff Lottery Kim Kelly.jpg

Hello everyone

I feel it in my fingers, I feel it in my toes! The weather is certainly all around us, and it’s mainly wet, wet, wet!

Fortunately, last week ended on a bright high! And I’m not just talking about the weather. At an incredibly inspiring Trust Board Workshop, members of the Board, including our Executive and Non-Executive Directors, senior managers and senior clinicians, all met to debate some of the major strategic decisions of our time as a Trust. Being an important part of the Pennine Lancashire Integrated Care Partnership, we all had a responsibility to think hard about how health and care would look and feel for the public and, most importantly our patients, over the next five years.

After a thrilling and energetic discussion, we decided to look towards bringing in some outstanding, new investments and bids for major pieces of equipment and estates development. These include such varied items as a new pharmacy robot, electronic patient record system, a vascular and interventional radiology operation theatre, a re-designed Paediatric unit, and more.

All these ideas are early in the planning stages. Some will be delivered in the next two years, some will take more time. But it’s really important that, as a Board, we balance our strategic direction and our financial situation with the safe, personal and effective care that ELHT is known for. We are privileged to be the provider of both hospital and community services to over half a million people, so we need to continue and improve our efforts for the whole population Lancashire and South Cumbria.

Flu jabs are well underway and (I am excited to tell you) we have already immunised 12% of our workforce in the first 10 days of the programme! Excellent progress. But we can’t stop there. Did you know that if you’re not immunised, you can get the flu virus and not show any signs or symptoms (so not realise you’ve got it) and then, even if you don’t have any symptoms, you can still pass it on to a work colleague or patient who may get really poorly with it? So, even if you’re someone who thinks that “I never get flu”, please just think about your ability to stop transmission. The vaccine can stop you being a carrier and passing it on to your friends, family and your co-workers, or even a more vulnerable person.

On Monday this week, it was my turn to deliver the “Executive Welcome” at the Trust’s induction for new staff. It’s always a huge privilege to welcome newcomers to the Trust, just because I always feel so proud to describe what a friendly place ELHT is to work. Referring to the smiles in the corridors, the awards we’ve won, as well as the challenges and hard work we have overcome, is a real treat to me and I want to keep this trend going.

But, if you’ve been at our induction days recently, and have now fully “settled-in” to your work role, you can still pass me any ideas for how we can continue to improve our induction process. Was there something else that you’d have liked to hear about at induction from an Executive? If so, please do drop me a line. What’s very encouraging, though, is our recent HR statistics, showing that our vacancy and turnover rate has continued to fall, our sickness absence has dropped, and that our total number of clinical staff continues to rise. Brilliant!

Also, congratulations to our 30th Anniversary Staff Lottery winner, Kim Kelly a domestic based at Royal Blackburn Teaching Hospital, who won our grand prize of £2000! Exceptional!  I’d just like to take this opportunity to remind all our wards and departments to submit their annual bid to the Staff Lottery Committee. Over the last 30 years, the Staff Lottery has paid out to more than 2000 winners, and used the money they’ve raised to fund some great staff prizes and benefits, including things like furniture, microwaves and fridges for staff areas. These can be the things that make a real difference towards making a more enjoyable working environment, so I strongly encourage you to submit your bid now! Get together, and discuss what would really make your time here at ELHT even better.   

And looking into next week, we will be celebrating the second international Allied Healthcare Professionals (AHP) day, which gives us the opportunity to celebrate and recognise the amazing contribution all our wonderful AHPs make patient care and improving the quality of people’s lives across the whole of East Lancashire. More on what’s planned is to follow, along with information on the open evening on 13 November.

If you enjoyed reading this blog, why not jump onto our social media platforms (if you’re not already there) and share and retweet it.

PS …The Eye Department have asked me to put in more jokes about eyes… the cornea the better…

Until next time.

Best wishes, Damian