221125-Chatterbox

25 November 2022

Last chance to complete your staff survey!

It’s your last chance to win a £500 holiday voucher! Complete your Staff Survey by 5pm TODAY to be in with a chance of winning.

We want to make our organisation a great place to work for everyone, so please fill your survey in before it closes. Just 15 minutes of your time will ensure that the changes we make now and in the future are informed by you.

Last year 45% of our organisation took part - thank you to all those who responded. There is a lot of good work under way as a direct result of last year’s survey and we have identified a number of flagship areas: Having your say this year will help us to continue on our improvement • Civility, Respect and Inclusion journey and shape what we do next.

• Flexible working We are working with an • Redesign of appraisal and independent third party provider, career conversations Quality Health, to administer the survey which means that the survey • Supporting our managers to is entirely confidential so your be great leaders responses remain anonymous.

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Further developing our Culture Programme

you can do so by calling 0800 783 1775.

Remember, prizes are available for individuals and teams who complete their survey, so all the more reason to fill it in!

More information about the NHS Staff Survey 2022 is available on the intranet.

A link to your survey has been sent Thank you to everyone who has to your inbox but if you would prefer taken the time to complete it so far, to complete it over the phone then we really appreciate your feedback.

Inside: World Diabetes Day, Maternity Support Workers’ Week and Disability Month

SaTH marks World Diabetes Day

Colleagues marked World Diabetes Day on 14 November to help raise awareness of the signs and the importance of early diagnosis.

Someone is diagnosed with diabetes every two minutes, but together, we have the power to #RewriteTheStory for everyone who will be diagnosed in the future.

More information can be found at www.diabetes.org.uk.

Claire’s swimming fundraiser for Bowel Cancer

Claire Heaton, Specialist Screening Practitioner, has taken part in Bowel Cancer UK’s ‘Swim15’ fundraising challenge.

improve the quality of life of everyone affected by bowel cancer.

Claire swam 15km during August and raised a total of £999.50 for the charity.

Someone is diagnosed with bowel cancer every 15 minutes in the UK, which is why the challenge was named ‘Swim15’.

Claire has worked in the Shropshire Bowel Cancer Screening Team since 2015 and was keen to take on the challenge to raise money to help save lives and

Claire said: “I thoroughly enjoyed the swimming challenge and I am planning another swim challenge next year.”

Marilyn gets in the spirit for Children in Need

Marilyn Chitty, DBS Workforce Administrator, donned a Pudsey outfit and got busy collecting money for Children in Need at RSH on Friday 18 November.

She said: “A big thank you to everyone at RSH who donated. It was a wonderfully sunny and

enjoyable morning, and I enjoyed putting a smile on lots of faces on their way into work which was an absolute joy!”

Marilyn’s brilliant efforts and your kind donations meant she managed to raise £295.

Maternity Support Workers’ Week This week marks MSW and WSA Week where we are celebrating and recognising all of our Maternity Support Workers (MSWs) and Women's Services Assistants (WSAs) at SATH and the amazing job they do.

As part of this week's celebrations, we have filmed WSAs and MSWs across our Postnatal Ward, Wrekin MLU, Delivery Suite and more to hear what they love about their role. Take a look at the videos on our dedicated Facebook page 'SaTH Maternity Information Hub'.

Dawn WSA, Delivery Suite

“The main part of my role involves supporting midwives to provide care to the woman and babies on the ward. This can be a diverse range of skills including observations, catheter care, feeding support, empowering and teaching new parents how to care for their new babies. This is my favourite aspect of my job, having the skills and knowledge to support a woman to feed her baby for the first time, teaching a family member to bath their baby, change a nappy or clothing.

“Teaching families to build bonds and close relationships with their newborn and watching that happen is the most precious and heart-warming experience and I sometimes can’t believe I have played a part in that!

“As the new role of MSW was introduced, I now have a new range of clinical skills including newborn observations, newborn blood spots and capillary samples for babies requiring additional “My name is Emily and I am an Maternity Support care means I am able to support midwives and Worker (MSW) on the Postnatal Ward. I have the neonatal teams with their daily tasks. been an MSW for 12 months, and was previously a Women’s Services Assistant (WSA) for nine “WSAs and MSWs play an integral role within years, also based on the Postnatal Ward. maternity services, supporting and working alongside the multidisciplinary team clinically, “I always knew I wanted to support women and communicating with each other and helping their families in the journey into parenthood but patients to have the most positive experience didn’t realise the varying roles there were in during their maternity journey. maternity services. I thought it was only midwives that provided care for women during their “We build strong relationships with our service pregnancy, delivery and postnatal period and had users, sharing their happy times, providing them no idea about the extent of the multidisciplinary with that well needed cup of tea and toast, a hand teams involved in their care. to hold and an ear to listen, a conversation in the middle of the night when their babies are awake “I initially had plans to become a Midwife myself, and feeding and always being on hand if needed. so after some research, discovered the role of a Women’s Services Assistant at SaTH, after a “WSAs and MSWs are kind, caring, have the short period of time I fell in love with my ability to adapt to many situations and I feel proud role. Every day is different, new families and their and honoured to be one of them.” babies, a varying array of clinical requirements and care needs.

Nursing Support Workers’ Day Wednesday 23 November was Nursing Support Workers’ Day. Nursing support workers (NSWs) are the bedrock of our wards, clinics and community teams working with everyone from children to adults in all aspects of healthcare.

The term ’nursing support worker’ encompasses hundreds of different job titles and roles, including health care assistants (HCAs), health care support workers (HCSWs), assistant practitioners (AP), trainee nursing associates (TNA) and nursing associates (NAs) (England).

Meet some of our wonderful NSWs...

L-R: Darcey, HCA; Chrissie, Housekeeper; Georgie, Ward Clerk

L-R: Lily, Therapy Support Worker; Yoko, OT; Dorota, Physio; and Erika, Nursing Associate

Steph and Ruth, Healthcare Assistants

Leona and Carli, Ward Clerks

Teresa, Ward Clerk and Amanda, HCA

If you missed the Trust Celebratory Awards, then there is still time to catch up!

The Awards took place on 17 November and highlighted the incredible work and exceptional dedication across our organisation, with 18 award categories and almost 400 nominations made in total.

We had some truly inspiring winners and you can find out more in last week’s special awards edition of Chatterbox which you can read here.

Congratulations once again to all of winners, finalists and nominees!

Daisy bags a golden ticket A number of golden tickets have been presented recently, one of which was awarded to Daisy Armstrong.

Daisy is a Student Physiotherapist who was surprised with a golden ticket on her last day of placement.

She is very keen to join the Trust and the team are looking forward to welcoming her back to start in her new role in May 2023.

Daisy (left, middle) was given the ticket by team members (L-R) Sarah Sandy, Team Lead for Surgical & Critical Care Physiotherapy, Matt Crolla, Specialist Physiotherapist, and (front) Joe Brisbourne, Physiotherapist.

Congratulations Daisy!

Carbon Literacy Action Day

The Sustainability Team held an information stand at PRH and RSH on Monday 7 and Tuesday 8 November to mark Carbon Literacy Action Day and provide information on what the Trust is doing to reduce its carbon footprint.

Carbon Literacy Action Day is the world’s largest climate education training day which also coincides with day one of the UN COP27 negotiations in Egypt.

The team had an excellent response to the event, which also sparked some great conversations with staff interested in sustainability. As

“Turn the heating down” “Reduce the number of singleuse items I use at home” “Reduce food waste”

“Buy second-hand clothes, or none at all for 12 months” “Send fewer emails and print less” part of the event, staff were asked to make a carbon pledge and to make a small change to reduce their carbon footprint.

Some of the pledges included: “Walk to work more often”

Thank you to everyone who made a pledge and congratulations to Natasha Birchall, Respiratory, for winning the £50 Amazon voucher in the carbon pledge prize draw!

William Farr event - 30 November This year's William Farr event is focusing on the wonderful work being done by staff and volunteers for our military community.

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We will be celebrating the life and work of • Florence Nightingale and volunteers like her during the Crimean and American Civil wars, and then highlighting the similarities in people's response to today's challenges.

• The evening will touch on the remarkable story of Florence Nightingale and her work with Shropshire’s William Farr that led to the reform of the Army Medical Service and hospital care of soldiers and the population.

Her brave work fighting infections is so like the efforts made by nurses in our hospitals today facing COVID-19.

Nurse Will Cadelina - who will talk of his experiences nursing patients with COVID following which he became seriously ill Lt Col (Retd) Maggie Durrant - Nurse, veteran and who today uses her military experiences to manage COVID vaccine centres across our region Lt Col Carl Meyer - Shropshire Consultant Orthopaedic Surgeon and lead of the RJAH Veteran Orthopaedic Service and the newly opened state of the art Veteran Orthopaedic Centre

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Sarah Kerr - a veteran who is supporting so many veterans in our community

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Lt Col Kevin Eardley and colleagues from 202Fd Hosp and SaTH for their work supporting reservists, regulars, and veterans in hospitals

The importance of data collection and using statistics to identify opportunities to improve care and address inequalities holds true today too, and Shropshire’s William Farr was the first in the Music will be provided by the 1119 Squadron of world to do this. the Air Cadets and the Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust Choir.

We’ll also hear about the plight of William Farr's son, Frederick, who ran away from home to fight for the north in the American Civil War. Frederick A curry buffet will be served between 5.307.00pm and the meeting will close by 9pm. would go on to fight at Gettysburg and would be supported by volunteers and nurses during his Entry is free. To book onto the event, please click service, which would end tragically. the link here.

Guest speakers at the event will include:

AAA Screening Team at ‘Men’s Health’ event

Our Abdominal Aortic Aneurysm (AAA) Screening Team joined other partner organisations as part of ‘Men’s Health Week’.

They were encouraging men to go along for AAA screening as part of a screening programme commissioned by Public Health England. It involves the team The local campaign travelling across the aimed to raise awareness county to 60 different GP of key health issues such practices to offer free as prostate cancer scans to all men in their symptoms, abdominal 65th year. aortic aneurysm screening and the Men over 65 who have prevalence of hidden not yet had a scan can mental health concerns. self-refer by contacting The team are pictured, the team on 01743 261 above, taking part in one 048 or sath.aaa@nhs.net of the events at Telford Shopping Centre.

Disability Month: 16 November - 12 December A message from Helen Troalen, Director of Finance:

At SaTH we want to: •

Disability History Month (DHM) is an annual event running from 16 November to 16 December 2022 and this year the theme is Disability, Health and Wellbeing.

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DHM provides a platform to raise awareness and another opportunity to remind us that disabilities do not define a whole person and that not all disabled people look the same.

Disabilities come in all shapes and forms. Some are visible, some are not. Some are permanent, some are not. Some are physical, some are related to mental health. Someone may have more than one disability, where one is visible and the other invisible, or their disability may fluctuate and be visible on some days but not others.

Regardless of the type of disability, every single person has an equal right to thrive and we as

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Helen Troalen the NHS and human beings have a responsibility to make sure that happens!

Currently, disabled people make up 22% of the UK’s general population: that is 1 in 5 of us. Yet research shows that nearly half of disabled people, and 87% of parents of disabled children, frequently feel judged by members of the public.

LINK

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Celebrate the achievements of staff with disabilities Encourage leaders and managers to support staff through compassion and inclusivity Encourage staff to record their disability on the NHS Electronic Staff Record and have open conversations Check-in with staff that sufficient adjustments have been made to support those with disabilities to carry out their roles Review recruitment practices to ensure they are inclusive

I really encourage you to be involved with the various events that are taking place nationally, and what we have here at SaTH.

Cost of Living Support Throughout the month of November, staff who are struggling with the cost of living will be able to receive a free soup and a roll from the restaurants at both PRH and RSH. Simply ask the catering staff and they will ensure this is provided.

Whose kids have already lost their jumper or cardigan? Have their shoes only lasted a month? It can be frustrating and stressful having to repurchase items so quickly, especially with the cost-of-living crisis and financial worries that many of us will have.

To support colleagues who are struggling during this time, a “support for school” voucher is accessible to our staff to help put funds towards the cost of providing your child(ren) with school uniforms, shoes, stationery etc. Colleagues will have to apply for this via their manager, chaplaincy team or health and wellbeing team.

For full guidance please click here.

Small Things Big Difference As the weather gets cooler, there maybe items that you or your colleagues need to make your work environment a little bit more comfortable.

The SaTH Charity ‘Small Things Big Difference’ Fund is available to help you at this time. It might be that your team needs a microwave so you can have hot food, or a working kettle for warm drinks?

Grants for up to £300 are available and can be applied for using the form here.

There are restrictions on the types of applications made. For instance, it shouldn't be for items you reasonably need to carry out your day to day work such as computers and stationery, or items such as antibacterial wipes or medical equipment, items must also adhere to Fire and Safety and IPC guidelines.

Walking and running group ED colleagues in Shrewsbury have set up a walking/running group and they would like to open it up to all colleagues.

Walk Talk Walk/Run Talk Run is either a 3k walk or 5k run, and allows colleagues to exercise and meet new people. The aim is to go at the pace of the slowest person in the group.

The group will be meeting next to the helipad outside the ED entrance at RSH on Fridays at 5.30pm from 4 November.

People need to wear appropriate clothing for exercising, and ideally something bright/reflective now the nights are drawing in.

To register your interest email: alexia.jones@nhs.net

Notice Board

Notice Board

PAGES 16-23

Staff Support

Staff Support

1st - £400 - Paul Wareing, Cancer Performance Analysis 2nd - £200 - Shannon Talbot, Ward 11 2nd - £200 - Hannah Brown, Radiotherapy 3rd - £100 - Valerie Roberts, Porter 3rd - £100 - Kayleigh Hall, AHP Assistant Practitioner

The final word...

I attended A&E on Wednesday 2 November 2022, I was so grateful to all your amazing staff there, every doctor, nurse or receptionist in A&E were brilliant.

I have so much admiration for them all as they do an amazing job. Please pass on my thanks and let them know what wonderful individuals they are—it makes me so proud of our NHS. To see the job they do on a daily basis I think they’re superhuman, they were so thorough and kept me informed of everything they were doing.

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