221216 - Chatterbox

The countdown to Christmas is on

The Christmas period is in full swing and there is an array of events and activities happening throughout the month. We want to ensure that everyone has the opportunity to celebrate.

Many of you have been tucking into festive lunches in our restaurants, watching the outdoor lights switch on, and getting involved in various competitions.

There’s still time to get involved.

Choirs

Come and enjoy (and even join in) with some festive choirs performing at our hospitals. Mince pies, tea and coffee will be provided.

• Tuesday 20 December, 12:30-1:30pm in Captain Tom’s Garden, PRH

• Wednesday 21 December, 12.15-1pm at Mytton Oak Restaurant, RSH

Christmas Day breakfast baps

The Catering team are taking bookings for staff to have a free Christmas morning sausage or vegetarian sausage bap from Apley or Mytton Restaurant. They will need to be collected between 9am – 11am on Christmas Day. Please visit the intranet for more details and to book yours.

Share a Christmas joke

We are looking for your favourite Christmas jokes to feature in some of our Christmas communications next week.

Send in your witty wisecracks, great gags and quirky quips to sath.commsteam@nhs.net to be in with a chance of yours being featured.

Our hospitals light up for Christmas

On Tuesday 29 November, we switched the Christmas lights on at PRH in

It was a fantastic festive

evening, supported by SaTH Charity, which really kick-started the celebrations in style.

On Tuesday 6 December the RSH Christmas lights were

switched on in Captain Tom’s Garden, which was also supported by SaTH Charity.

Thank you to everyone who made these events so special.

Captain Tom’s Courtyard.

Pulling our socks up for Christmas

On 7 December we celebrated NHS Christmas Sock Day. Not everyone can wear a Christmas jumper to work, but many of us donned our favourite pair of festive socks (or tights!) for the occasion.

It was a great way to have fun and also raise

money for our Charity, who have supported various teams throughout the year and gave out prizes to the teams with the best socks.

The winners are: Phlebotomy, RSH (above left) and Ward 15 and 16 (above right).

and the prizes went to...

Christmas tree competition

Staff have been busy decking out their wards and offices and I'm sure you’ll agree they are all looking fabulously festive.

Next week we will be sharing more information on how you can vote for the winner in our Christmas tree competition.

Kind couple donate trees to staff

SaTH Charity had a fantastic offer for colleagues from a local couple (right) who wanted to give away two real Christmas trees grown on their smallholding.

The winners are: Nicola Teckoe, Head and Neck Clinic Prep, Atcham Business Park (below) and Karen Robinson, Heart Assessment Team, PRH. Congratulations both.

Festive lunches go down a treat

Christmas meals, with big smiles

s a busy time for our Catering teams, who have worked incredibly hard preparing the More details can be found on our intranet

Children get creative in card competition

What an artistic bunch we have on our Paediatric Ward.

Children and young people staying in our hospitals were invited to take part in a Christmas drawing competition and a wonderful array of entries were submitted. There were three age categories: seven and

under, eight to 12 years and 13 to 17 years.

The quality of the pictures made selecting the best designs a really difficult job, however, Hayley Flavell, Director of Nursing, rose to the challenge and selected three worthy winners (bottom).

The winner of each category will be presented with a prize, with the overall winner being produced as a SaTH Christmas card.

Images of all entries are on display in the hospital Chapels during the month of December, so do pop in to see them.

The winning designs

Donations pile up for our young patients

Our Children’s Ward has received a number of visitors and donations in the run up to Christmas.

The Telford Tigers Ice Hockey Team called in with a large donation of teddies from the crowd teddy toss during last weekend’s game. The ward also received a huge donation of gifts

Thank you to everyone doing their bit to make this Christmas as magical as possible for our children and young people.

Couple raise £1,500 for wellbeing boxes

A Shropshire couple who raised more than £1,500 following the sad loss of their baby son, George, have created well-being boxes for bereaved parents in hospital.

Martha, a nurse at The Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust (SaTH), and Ben Gumsley, a paramedic, lost their son George at 21 weeks gestation.

The well-being boxes, which are called ‘Love from, George’, include an array of useful items to support families. Martha and Ben hope to keep re-stocking the boxes for as long as fundraising allows.

Santa stops by Neonatal Unit party

This week our Neonatal team held a Christmas party for children who have spent time on the unit in the past.

A big thank you to everyone who joined us and to the team for organising such a special afternoon.

A special mention also goes to Alex from our Stores department who dressed up as Santa and put Christmas smiles on everyone's faces.

Christmas crafting in the libraries

The SaTH Libraries team got into the spirit of things and held Christmas card making sessions.

Staff were invited to drop in for a cuppa and some crafting, and there was also the option

to pick up a ready-made card making kit to take home.

The sessions were supported by SaTH’s Small Things Make A Big Difference Fund.

The libraries currently have a range of festive books available, so whether you're looking for some Christmas cooking inspiration or a wintry tale to warm your heart, they have just the books for you.

A warm welcome awaits you in our chapels

December is a very special time to visit our hospital chapels, whether it be for some support, quiet reflection or a cup of tea with a chaplain.

Advent wreaths, nativity scenes and advent remembrance trees are all located in each of the Chapels,

which each one holding a special significance.

If you are working at or visiting one of our hospitals on Christmas Day, you are most welcome to join a Christmas Day Communion Service, which is being held in both chapels at 10.30am.

Chaplain’s Corner

(in addressing the town unaware of the Saviour’s birth) “Yet in thy dark streets shineth, the everlasting light. The hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight”.

God’s loving response to messy and broken world was to quietly enter in beside it, to love it and live it with us. That is the joy and hope of Christmas, yet we can take God’s gift and create burdens for ourselves and others through the expectations and pressures we place on each other.

A story to highlight the point. Once upon a time in a luxury country house hotel, there was a deputy general manager.

He was a perfectionist and workaholic often working fourteen hours a day, on really busy days eighteen.

had in mind when penning these words.

He wrote the carol just three years after the end of the American Civil War in 1868 the most brutal war on home soil that America ever knew.

Wives and mothers counted themselves lucky if their husbands and sons had come home lacking an arm or leg or an eye or shivering with what we now call PSTD.

Phillips Brooks wrote of the stable in Bethlehem as he place where hope and fear meet each other, and where hope emerges the ultimate victor in his carol.

As a priest, like my fellow chaplains, and all who work in our hospitals, I am aware that for some Christmas is not the ‘rose-tinted’ perfect picture found in Christmas adverts or in films.

Often Christmas can prove to be highly charged emotionally as we strive for a perfect family Christmas only for arguments, stresses and/or strains in relationships to surface.

There are those who will mourn a loved one having lost them this year, or those who have been separated from family for a variety of reasons.

We also know that our wards and A+Es will see many for whom Christmas is far from joyous. But all this is okay. Why? Because as the carol goes

All the departments reported to him, and he was the ‘face’ of the hotel for the guests. The manager would get annoyed with the staff for leaving the staff room in a state, and he would fume (inwardly) for not watering the poor plant on the window ledge.

Every week he would check on the plant, which was always dry and would water it, before resuming his busy schedule.

After a few weeks, his hand happened to touch the leaf of the plant only to discover that it was artificial! The staff had been perfectly right in not watering it, he was the one so out of kilter and in the wrong. I was that hotel manager!

Often, we can get out of kilter or equilibrium with the busyness of Christmas. For those willing and able to celebrate it, it is a wonderful and joyous time.

For those who are struggling with finances we need to adjust expectations, simplify our Christmas and look to the most important aspects such as love, reconciliation and friendship.

And for those who find Christmas painful through isolation or grief, may they too find hope and comfort this year. If you do need a Chaplain then we are around throughout Christmas as always.

I pray that you have a blessed Christmas and New Year - whether working, relaxing or with family and friends.

Hike to raise funds for Doctors in Distress

Pete Checketts, an anaesthetics trainee currently working at PRH, is planning to hike 85 miles in the Spring to raise funds.

He will be hiking for five to six days across the highest 20 Shropshire hills to fundraise for Doctors in Distress, a charity aimed at preventing suicide in healthcare workers.

Pete is aiming to raise awareness and raise funds for the charity.

If you would like to donate, Pete’s JustGiving page can be found here.

SaTH strengthens ties with student volunteers

The Public Participation Team has been celebrating their relationship with Telford College and some of their amazing students that volunteer with us across both hospital sites.

Poppy Horrocks, Young Volunteer Project Lead, was invited to Telford College to talk to students and see their simulation suite and simulation doll ‘Betty’.

Poppy spoke to students and teachers about the wonderful help and support volunteers provide within our hospitals and how important their roles are.

Poppy’s work with young people is vital as it helps them to gain experience in a variety of different wards and areas, inspiring them to pursue careers within the NHS.

College, and other colleges in the area, to place students in appropriate and relevant volunteer roles that fit in with their college timetables.

Julia Clarke, Director of Public Participation, said: “We have 311 amazing volunteers currently working at SaTH, and we are so grateful to all our

visitors and relatives and support our staff.

“Currently we have 170 volunteers who are under the age of 25 and our ongoing partnerships with local colleges is so important to us. As well as providing a great experience, it can also help the students with their future career choices”.

Cost of Living Support

The wellbeing of our staff is a priority, and this means making sure you are healthy within work, but also within your personal lives.

We know that the cost-of-living rises will be affecting all of us in some way, and for some it will be causing significant stress and worry.

We have developed a Winter Financial Wellbeing Package for staff who find themselves struggling. This package enables anyone working at one of our hospital sites to apply for vouchers or funding to support financial wellbeing.

Our aim is to support staff to manage their finances, as well as ensuring they able to eat, drink, and support their family during school and winter months.

Staff can receive a free soup and a roll from the restaurants at both PRH and RSH, as well as a free breakfast. Simply ask the catering team and they will ensure this is provided.

For full details please click here.

Support your SaTH Charity with a smile

Support your SaTH Charity and help us to support you via Amazon Smile.

AmazonSmile is a simple way for you to support our charity every time you shop, at no cost to you.

AmazonSmile is available at smile.amazon.co.uk on your web browser and can be activated in the Amazon Shopping App for iOS and Android phones.

When you shop with AmazonSmile, you’ll have the same shopping experience as amazon.co.uk, with the added bonus that AmazonSmile will donate a portion of the purchase price to your selected charity. Money

raised from Amazon Smile goes into the Small Things Big Difference fund, which is a fund exclusively for staff and has purchased things like fridges, kettles, microwaves and staff room

furniture, and supported the redevelopment of our door areas such as Captain Tom’s Garden and Courtyard.

https://smile.amazon.co.uk/ ch/1107883-0