Your Hospital The magazine for members and supporters of east Kent’s hospitals Summer 2015
In this edition: New Buckland Hospital opens
Pathology ‘behind the scenes’ events
Updates from your Governors
Charity Appeal news
Welcome from Nikki In April this year I was delighted to take up the position of Chair for our Trust and, while visiting our hospitals, I’ve been extremely impressed by the openness of our staff, their caring attitude, and how welcoming they are to patients. I was particularly pleased by the positive way our staff approached the recent visits from Care Quality Commission inspectors, and to see staff doing a great job of explaining the many improvements we have made in the last year. I know that many of you attend our excellent membership events and participate in patient groups. I would also like to thank all our partners and charities who help our hospitals. We very much appreciate the support you give us, especially during challenging times, and want you to know that your views are very important to us to help us shape the future of our Trust. Please tell us your thoughts or feelings by emailing foundationtrust@nhs.net Nikki Cole Trust Chair
A message from Chris It is a pleasure to write for your newsletter for the first time. I write at the end of a week-long inspection of our hospitals by the Care Quality Commission. It has been fantastic to show the inspecting team all the work we have done to improve our services and see staff show them around with enthusiasm and pride. While I’m confident that we are making good progress, I am clear that our improvement journey will continue for a long time. We need to make our improvements ‘business as usual’ and we have very real issues to tackle, including developing a financial recovery plan for the Trust that has patients firmly at the centre of what we do. We also need to respond to greater demands upon the NHS – from the need for a genuinely sevenday health service to the needs of an increasing population with more complex health issues than ever before. One of our big priorities is to work with the people who use our services, and the organisations that work with us in providing health and social care, to develop a strategy for healthcare in east Kent that will allow us to continue to provide excellent NHS services into the future. Please look out for your opportunity to contribute to this strategy as a member of this Foundation Trust. Chris Bown Interim Chief Executive
New Buckland Hospital now open The new Buckland Hospital is now open! The state of the art hospital offers a wide range of outpatient services with improved access to diagnostics, pharmacy and other clinical services. A new procedure suite allows for one-stop clinics to ensure patients can have their consultation, diagnostics, treatment and any pre-assessment during one visit. There is also a Minor Injuries Unit and Ambulatory Care facilities. These are nurse led and able to link to the main sites via video facilities for medical advice. The new building houses an x-ray department, children’s assessment centre, renal satellite unit, women’s health, and therapy services such as physiotherapy. There are improved staff training rooms, state of the art information technology and an additional renal station and a new pharmacy.
Members of our Laboratory Medicine Department ready to greet visitors at the Pathology health event in Canterbury
Pathology ‘Behind the Scenes’ events Over 200 members attended the Pathology “Behind the Scenes” event in February this year. Prof Firtz Muhlschlegel FRC Path, FSB Consultant Microbiologist and his team gave a very interesting presentation about the work our Pathology departments. The members were also given the opportunity to meet the Governors during an exhibition before the main event and several members of the Pathology team were on hand to answer questions. Some of the facts about our Pathology services: Where do the requests come from? • East Kent Hospitals serves a population of 759,000
GP Surgeries
43%
• 449,000 of whom had a least one pathology test in 2014
Hospital Inpatients
26%
• 2,529,000 sample tubes and containers used
Hospital Outpatients
16%
• 9,982,000 tests were done
Hospital A&E
10%
• 39,000 cervical cytology slides were used
Other NHS Trusts
4%
• 78,000 biopsy specimens producing 213,000 histology slides
Private Hospitals
1%
Please take a look at the dates for your diary page for information about upcoming events.
Can Mindfulness help with our Cultural Change process? Mindfulness has gained considerable popularity through media coverage and there has been a surge in demand for face to face and digital courses as well as best-selling books and CD’s. So what exactly is it? Put quite simply, it is an exercise in reorganising your mind by focussing your attention on the present moment, using guided meditation. Pioneered by Professor Jon Kabat-Zinn at Massachusetts Medical School, and in the UK by Professor Mark Williams at Oxford University, initially to help patients with chronic pain but was then found to have far reaching beneficial health effects. As well as being recommended by NICE for the treatment of recurrent depression, there is now good evidence that mindfulness based interventions can reduce symptoms of depression and anxiety for people living with long term conditions such as vascular disorders, chronic pain and cancer. High levels of stress in the workplace contribute to mental health problems and feed inappropriate behaviour towards each other. The NHS is particularly susceptible to this. There are some preliminary research findings as well as anecdotal evidence that mindfulness can have a positive impact on improved decision making, empathy and more collaborative working relationships as well as helping with anxiety and stress. Last year an all-party Parliamentary group carried out an eight month enquiry into the potential for mindfulness training in key areas of public life...heath, education, workplaces and the criminal justice system. Their preliminary report entitled “The Mindfulness Initiative” was released in December 2014. http://www. themindfulnessinitiative.org.uk They found mindfulness to be a” transformative practice, leading to a deeper understanding of how to react to situations wisely.” As well as recommending that access to MBCT( mindfulness based cognitive behavioural therapy) be substantially widened for adults with a history of depression, they ALSO RECOMMENDED that the public sector employees such as the NHS set up pilot projects that can be evaluated as part of their responsibility to combat stress. The cultural change committee is seeking to change the working lives of trust employees for the better. I believe that mindfulness is a useful tool in helping to facilitate that change as a comparatively low cost intervention with a wide range of benefits. Should we be an early adopter and become a mindful employer? I think so! Let me know your views! Dr Philip Bull Consultant Rheumatologist and Staff Governor
Charity Dementia Appeal well underway! Last year, East Kent Hospitals Charity launched the new appeal supporting Dementia to improve the patient environment across all of our five hospitals. Since the launch the charity has been building up a catalogue of projects that we will raise money for, such as the refurbishment of the day room on Harbledown Ward at Kent & Canterbury Hospital, transforming it into a fantastic sensory environment for patients on the ward. Another project is the renovation of the garden area adjoining Minster Ward at QEQM Hospital Margate, turning it into a place for patients, carers and family to go to relax. The garden will incorporate designs from the local area such as Dreamland, and gives an opportunity to relax in a calm environment. The Appeal has purchased four reminisce pods. Known as “RemPods”, they are a pop-up solution giving patients either a kitchen or a cinema to view and the opportunity to interact with something whilst in our care. The charity is also about to launch a ‘Challenge 500’ campaign, asking the wards to raise £500 each to purchase specialist reminiscence equipment for their department.
East Kent Hospitals Charity
Dementia Appeal
The Appeal is also delighted to welcome the support of the former Trust Chairman Nicholas Wells who will be heading up an Appeal Committee as the Chairman.
Further details of the projects can be found on our website
www.ekhuft.nhs.uk/dementiaappeal and for more information please contact Luke Underdown at ekh-tr.dementiaappeal@nhs.net or call 07896 200237.
Promoting excellence I am proud of the NHS. I am proud of the national institution and of this Trust. Neither are perfect, as local events over the past year have shown, but it is all too easy - and misleading to focus exclusively on the negative elements. Sadly, the media seem to do this almost daily. Like many of you, I am keenly aware of the high quality treatment and service that is provided by front-line staff to thousands of patients in East Kent every day. Lives are saved and lives are changed for the better. There are some quite amazing good-news stories about this work that never appear in the media. Increasingly, patients receive cutting-edge treatments and procedures that are the result of the continuing advances in medical science. Some of the research, and the associated clinical trials, that make these advances possible, is undertaken in our local hospitals. Only a very small percentage of this ever gets reported.
I am keenly aware of the high quality treatment and service that is provided by front-line staff...
I know that the Trust does a valiant job in providing positive news stories and briefings to the media, but few see the light of day. It is right, of course, that the media should make the public aware of imperfections and failings in the healthcare system, but I, for one, would like to see more balance in their reporting. Perhaps we should all challenge our local newspapers, and television and radio channels, to provide this. Brian Glew Lead Governor
48 for every 1 That’s the number of compliments we receive every day for every one complaint.
In the news Queen’s Award for Voluntary Service to League of Friends of the Kent & Canterbury Hospital This award recognises the incredible work that has been done by the hundreds of League volunteers who, over the past 62 years, have raised over £7.5m and have provided services to support the patients, staff and visitors to the Kent & Canterbury Hospital. The Queen’s Award for Voluntary service was launched in 2002 as part of celebrations for The Queen’s Golden Jubilee and is the MBE for volunteer groups.
Julian Brazier MP delighted staff at the official opening of our outpatient services at the Estuary View Medical Centre in Whitstable. Once fully operational, the site will provide outpatient services to up to 20,000 patients on the north Kent coast. The new outpatient clinics will include: Paediatrics, Rheumatology, Endocrinology (diabetes), Gastroenterology, Health care of Older People, Ophthalmology, General Surgery, Respiratory, Vascular, Trauma and Orthopaedics, and later, Gynaecology
School children design artwork for A&E windows Eleven floor-to-ceiling external window panels in the A&E waiting room at QEQM were in need of updating and local primary schools were asked get involved by running an in-school art competition to replace the previously dated artwork. Pupils were asked to design something based on local places of interest like Dreamland, our beaches, Ramsgate Harbour, Margate Old Town or around themes on caring for people in hospital - like nurses, caring for grandparents, mums and their babies’, doctors, nurses and ambulances.
New Public Governors The decision to stand for election as a governor was driven by our experience of and interest in the challenges facing the NHS in East Kent at this time and a desire, as local residents, to contribute to the next stage of the Trusts development to take account of our changing health needs and expectations locally. For many new governors it is a new experience to ask questions of non-executive directors that enable the Council of Governors to hold them to account. These questions are important to ensure good governance. In fact we are due to have training in a few weeks time in ways of working with the Trust Board so that, as a governing council, we are truly effective in our role. As appointed governors we need to ensure that we are offering the views and opinions of our constituency and not just a personal view. Being a member of the governor council allows us to have a greater understanding of the working of the Trust and the way that the Trust works with its Council of Governors. This has been the biggest challenge so far, understanding that relationship and how the lines of communication work. For a new governor there is an excellent governor induction programme. The Trust organises familiarisation tours that are intended to introduce new governors to each hospital and a wide range of departments. These tours give new governors a good idea of how the hospitals function and demonstrate some of the issues that NHS and the Trust face and also the good things that are being achieved. We have so far had very good induction sessions including Trust Finance and have visited a variety of hospital sites and met a cross section of staff. One area all of us have become involved in is the work of the various committees. These committees specialise in specific aspects of work of the Council of Governors such as Finance, Audit, Remuneration, Patient and Staff Experience and Strategic Issues. There are also a number of working groups set up to oversee aspects of the Improvement Action Plan that governors also attend. One example is the Cultural Change Committee. Other ways that we are involved include ‘Meet the Governor’ events held regularly in each hospital. It is an opportunity to allow the governing council the opportunity to learn and improve or to acknowledge good practice. Further examples are open evening events for members, such as the recent Sepsis events. These events were very well attended, with an excellent exhibition and a presentation from Dr Michelle Webb and her team. Governors also undertake Patient Safety visits, visiting wards and departments at the various sites to get first hand experience and assurance about how our services are provided safely. Council meetings were initially daunting as there are a lot of people around the table, and there is much to prepare before the meeting to ensure that we have a clear understanding of the reports, so that our questions are appropriate. One huge learning curve has been the use of jargon and many acronyms in papers and meetings. It is something that we still need to get to grips with 3 months in. To become a governor, particularly from outside the world of medicine, you need to be prepared for a period of time when much is in code! In the last three months all of us have found that our lives have changed with many e-mails each week from someone across the Trust and meetings we could choose to attend quite regularly. If you choose to be involved in all that is happening NHS governance could be a full time occupation. As volunteers we are choosing to get involved in areas where we think we will be most effective.
Chris Warricker
Jane Burnett
Dr Philip Bull
Sarah Andrews CBE
Susan Seymour
Dates for your diary September 2015
Charity dates
Meet the Govenors
Saturday 22 August Staff at the William Harvey sell ‘Treasures from the Attic’ for the Dementia Appeal in the foyer at WHH
Thursday 17 September 10.00 - 12.00 Buckland Hospital Reception
October 2015 Annual Members’ Meeting Thursday 1 October Time: 18.00 Canterbury Cricket Ground
Meet the Govenors Thursday 15 October 10.00 - 12.00 Outpatients, K&C
Saturday 22 August K&C League of Friends Summer Fete Friday 18 September Charity Golf Day at Chestfield Golf Club – raising money for Team Jo Epilepsy Society, supporting neurology at K&C Saturday 3 October Black Tie Ball – Jamie Spencer is holding a ball at the Mercure Great Danes Hotel, Maidstone to raise money for Brabourne Ward at K&C Saturday 28 November Twinkling Stars Vintage Christmas Bonanza – raising money for bereavement services at the WHH
November 2015 Clinical Strategy Membership Event Tuesday 3 November 17.30 - 19.30 Lecture Theatre, K&C Thursday 5 November 17.30 - 19.30 Buckland Hospital Monday 9 November 17.30 - 19.30 Lecture Theatre, QEQM Thursday 12 November 17.30 - 19.30 Lecture Theatre, WHH
‘Your hospital’ is produced by the East Kent Hospitals Communications Department. Unless otherwise indicated, the views expressed in ‘Your Hospital’ are those of its contributors and are not necessarily the views of the Trust.
Contact us Communications Department, Trust Offices, Kent & Canterbury Hospital, Ethelbert Road, Canterbury, CT1 3NG Email: mandy.carliell@nhs.net
Meet the Govenors Monday 16 November 10.00 - 12.00 Outpatients, Royal Victoria Hospital
Visit www.ekhuft.nhs.uk/members for more information
The life of a BioMedical Scientist I have worked in Laboratory Medicine for 36 years, 28 years in East Kent and since 1995 as a Chief BioMedical Scientist (BMS) at QEQM, specialising in blood transfusion science. My job role, in Laboratory Medicine, has changed in recent years, from being responsible for the day to day running of the blood transfusion department to now managing a combined Blood Sciences Department of 43 staff which includes BioMedical Scientists, Assistant HealthCare Scientists and Phlebotomists. The role of a BMS is to assist the clinician in the diagnosis of disease and the monitoring of treatment. Biochemistry tests screen for organ function such as renal, liver, cardiac and thyroid. Haematology tests include screening for clotting disorders, anaemia, blood malignancies and parasites. In blood transfusion, the BMS is responsible for providing compatible blood and blood product support to cover surgery, for correction of anaemia and in acute blood loss. However qualified BMS’ are extremely hard to recruit and staffing the laboratory is becoming an increasingly challenging problem. The Service at QEQM is now dependent on these cross-trained BMS’ who work a 24 hour shift system, 365 days a year to deliver the Service. They are supported by Healthcare Scientists, who enter requests onto the Laboratory computer system, centrifuge samples, load analysers and perform analyser maintenance. Working together as a team, the staff in Blood Sciences at QEQM, ensure that the Service remains reliable and responsive and this is mirrored by all staff working in Laboratory Medicine across all three Sites in East Kent. One of my main roles as Chief BMS at QEQM, working with the Quality Leads in Blood Sciences, is to ensure the quality of the Service is maintained and managed so that the users of our Service can be confident in knowing that the Department is providing a timely, reliable, responsive and safe service to our patients. The Blood Sciences Laboratories are regularly inspected to meet UKAS Pathology accreditation and the Blood Transfusion Department is inspected, for compliance, with the Blood Safety and Quality Regulations 2005, by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) The pressures on the Service are increasing as the Laboratory moves to seven day routine working, increasing workloads and repertoire of tests. The staff are working under difficult conditions, but at QEQM I have the pleasure of leading an excellent team of well-motivated and driven professionals, dedicated to ensuring we provide a quality service to our patients. I know that the same can be said for the excellent team in Laboratory Medicine at K&C and WHH. Robert Goddard – Staff Governor Chief Biomedical Scientist
Who are your governors?
Jane Burnett Public: Ashford
Chris Warricker Public: Ashford
Junetta Whorwell Public: Ashford
Brian Glew Public: Canterbury
Philip Wells Public: Canterbury
Pauline Hobson Public: Canterbury
Sarah Andrews CBE Public: Dover
Carole George Public: Dover
Margo Laing Public: Dover
Dr Philip Bull Public: Shepway
Susan Seymour Public: Shepway
Dr John Sewell Public: Shepway
Paul Durkin Public: Swale
Matt Williams Public: Swale
Roy Dexter Public: Thanet
Reynagh Jarrett Public: Thanet
Marcella Warburton Public: Thanet
Eunice Lyons Backhouse Rest of England & Wales
Find out more Geraint Davies Partnership
Jane Martin Partnership
Michael Lyons Partnership
Debra Teasdale Partnership
To read more about your Governors and find out how to contact them, please visit our website: www.ekhuft.nhs.uk/members
David Bogard Staff
Mandy Carliell Staff
Robert Goddard Staff
Vikki Hughes Staff
Putting patients first