Welcome to November’s issue of the CNO Bulletin.
This month, we’re going to take a big look at our first-ever Nursing and Midwifery Excellence Summit and share the successes from the event. We were incredibly fortunate to virtually welcome the Deputy Chief Nursing Officer for England, Hilary Garratt CBE, to the event to present three prestigious awards to members of our incredible team.
I’m looking forward to exploring our Pathway to Excellence® journey this month too, shining a light on one of our brilliant 120 ambassadors, while we’ll also look even further at the Excellence Indicators which we recently launched.
And finally, in what will be my last CNO Bulletin before moving to NHS England on secondment, I have to say a massive ‘thank you’.
I’ve spent more than 25 years working for the NHS, but there truly hasn’t been anything quite like working as your Chief Nursing Officer. Stepping away from TeamUHCW hasn’t been as easy decision to make, but it’s one which has been much more comfortably in the knowledge that Tracey Brigstock will continue to build on the incredible work which is going on across the Trust as your new Chief Nursing Officer.
The end of last month saw our long anticipated Nursing & Midwifery Excellence Summit come to life! On Wednesday 27th October, nursing and midwifery colleagues from across the organisation gathered for a showcase of excellence, including workshops for staff to engage in professional development, career pathway and leadership opportunities.
Hosted by Chief Nursing Officer Professor Nina Morgan, the lecture theatre was filled with direct care nurses and midwives, many who took part and presented as part of our showcase of excellence from across our clinical areas, highlighting how they’ve been driving excellence for staff support and patient care in their workplaces.
We had some fantastic guest speakers, including Trust Board Chair Stella Manzie and Non-Executive Director Guy Daly, who delivered inspirational key note speeches. We were also joined by Deputy Chief Nurse for England Hilary Garratt CBE, who presented three very special CNO Silver Awards.
These incredible accolades were awarded to Deputy CNO Tracey Brigstock, Associate Director of Nursing Vicky Williams and Modern Matron Lorna Jones, recognising their major contributions made to both patients and the profession.
It was a day of inspiration and empowerment, with attendees saying they “came away from it feeling uplifted and inspired to lead improvement” to impact positive culture in their areas of practice.
Applications are open for the NHS Clinical Entrepreneur Programme, an educational workforce development programme designed for healthcare professionals who want to develop and scale their most innovative ideas for patient benefit.
The programme was launched in 2016 and has already recruited over 700 individuals including Pharmacists, Doctors, Dentists and Healthcare Scientists, Nurses and Midwives, and Allied Health Professionals from a range of diverse backgrounds. Places on this prestigious programme will be offered, through a competitive process, to applicants who have developed clinical innovations to improve patient care and support service redesign through commercial and non-commercial enterprises. Please see attached CEP letter from Ruth May.
Please join this webinar to launch the Cov & Warks Standard Operating Procedure for 'Strengthening Partnership Working Between Midwifery and 0-5 Public Health Nursing'. See attached poster for more details.
This webinar takes place on Tuesday, 30th November at 13:00 - 14:15.
Click here to book. All Midwives & Health Visitors are encouraged to attend.
This webinar can be used as evidence of learning for revalidation.
As part of our journey to Pathway to Excellence® credentialing, we have been building our Pathway Ambassador network.
We now have over 120 ambassadors across the organisation, which is really exciting! We hold a virtual huddle every fortnight, to engage with our ambassadors about promoting positive culture and excellence in their workplaces.
Last month saw the exciting launch of our Excellence Indicators! Mapped to the Pathway to Excellence® framework, ambassadors will be engaging with staff in their areas, driving professional discussion about what contributes to our workplace cultures and how we can all influence and impact positive culture. They also be gathering feedback from staff on each of the monthly indicators, contributing to our strategy to promote positive practice environments and ideas for improvement as to how we can support staff to deliver excellent patient care.
Find out who your local Pathway Ambassador is if you don’t know already and ask them about this month’s Excellence Indicators!
This month we have interviewed one of our Pathway Ambassadors, Alison Kavanagh, Clinical Education Lead for Renal Services to find out about positive practice environments, their career to date and a little personal insight.
Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and your career to date?
Coming from a family of healthcare professionals, I began my nurse training at Coventry School of Nursing in 1980 and so have had a long career here. On qualifying, I started on a medical ward at Gulson Rd Hospital Coventry but soon transferred to the then Walsgrave Hospital to work on the newly opening Renal Ward . How times have changed as then there were only around 8 dialysis stations and no vascular catheters! A large part of my early career while raising my family was working permanent nights Whilst this was largely within Renal, a night sisters post allowed me to gain experience in gynaecology, urology and radiotherapy Returning to day duty and having seen the light literally, I worked as a Band 6 and was able to be exposed to other areas within the service i.e. Peritoneal and Haemodialysis. Supporting students in practice was always a passion and I was lucky enough to secure a secondment with the Practice Educators team. This gave me invaluable and lifelong skills that remain pertinent to my current role. After a period of working as Ward Manager on W50, life priorities saw me back as Band 6 and very much clinically focused.
What do you love about your current role most?
My current role in Renal Education has to be the best job ever and allows me to support and develop staff while being very clinically focused and visible. It's about hands on working with either brand new students/newly qualified staff to more experienced staff, to helping shape the future of our nurses, our learning environment and our service. I am really fortunate to have the time to do this.
We know you’re one of our Pathway to Excellence® Ambassadors, how are you promoting positive practice environments across the renal speciality?
Pathway to Excellence is our chance to drive positive change and I am all for sharing that positivity with my colleagues across the service. This takes the form of a 5 minute chat or a more formal professional discussion. This could be at our huddle, coffee room or someone stopping me asking about the big blue badge.
What do you like to get up to when you’re not at work?
Family time is always important and I am a proud mum and nannie. We have a dog that rules our life. My garden is my passion, although I am very much a fair weather gardener. I enjoy trawling through Antique shops and charity shops and collect vintage makeup compacts.
Firstly a huge 'Congratulations' to Ward 33 Surgery, Ward 33/10 ECU, Ward 42, Hoskyn Ward and Ward 23 Gynaecology on receiving recognition at the Nursing and Midwifery Excellence Summit.
Ward 33/10 ECU were celebrated for achieving the highest Bronze award in the first round of assessments.
Ward 42, Hoskyn Ward and Ward 23 Gynae achieved recognition for demonstrating the most continuous improvement in standards met following their baseline assessment in 2019.
Ward 33 Surgery achieved a Silver award after piloting the new scoring methodology for Version 13 of the framework.
These awards demonstrate how the framework recognises and rewards excellence in care whilst also providing teams with clear focus for improvement.
Following the completion of Cohort 1 assessments (adult base wards) the framework has undergone the final part of the PDSA cycle. The elements and standards have been reviewed alongside the scoring methodology. Assessments will continue on an annual basis and reassessments for those wards that did not meet any standards will occur six months later. Below is the timeline for planned assessments which was recently approved at the Nursing and Midwifery Committee (NMC).
Three Essential Core standards have now been identified that must be achieved for a ward/department to achieve higher than a White Award. These are:-
Standard 11 – Pressure ulcer Prevention
Standard 12 - Falls Prevention
Standard 13 – Infection, Prevention and Control
Patient safety is a priority and by identifying 3 Essential Core standards this will assist areas to remain focussed on providing the highest standards of care for patients.
Congratulations to our new Associate Professors in Nursing Liz Lees-Deutsch and Jenny Gamble. Liz started with us in October and Jenny flew from Australia to join us from August.
Click here the read more about Liz or Jenny.
Clinical Research Network West Midlands are supporting a two-year Personal Development Award aimed specifically at Nurses, Midwives, Allied Healthcare Professionals and clinical health scientists.
This award may be used in a variety of circumstances, such as locally supporting recruitment to a large externally funded research project on CRN portfolio, and also prior to applying for a future Clinical Research Scholarship, for example HEE/NIHR Pre-Doctoral Clinical Academic Fellows (PCAF) programmes or NIHR Clinical Doctoral Research Fellowships (CDRF).
The following will be provided for all candidates:
The closing date for application is 17 December 2021. If interested please contact R&D Senior Research Development Facilitator Robert.Klimek@uhcw.nhs.uk for more details.
As we head into autumn, we can reflect on the wonderful DAISY Award Ceremonies which have continued over the summer months. To date, a total of 40 of our extraordinary Registered Nurses and Midwives have been congratulated as deserving honourees of a prestigious DAISY Award!
We are delighted that funding for the DAISY Awards has now been secured for a further year so that we can continue to celebrate our extraordinary Nurses and Midwives and the excellent care that they provide.
The 27th October marked the date of the UHCW Nursing and Midwifery Excellence Summit, where we showcased all of our DAISY honourees over the last 12 months and celebrated excellence in Nursing and Midwifery and, throughout November, we look forward to presenting more DAISY awards – could you be our next honouree?
Hi Melanie, we know you volunteer in your local community and support a children’s gymnastics club, tell us all about it!
My sister and I run a small gymnastic club in Exhall, Coventry. We hire the gym at Exhall Grange School for our sessions on Monday and Friday evenings. I coach the children aged 12 years old and upwards, which takes place on a Monday evening, while my sister coaches children aged under 12 years old on a Friday.
How did you get involved in the club?
I have been part of this lovely club for nearly 50 years, since I was six years old. We took ownership of it when the last Head Coach passed away very suddenly in 2008.
It was a steep learning curve for my sister and I. Our club is not at all a highly competitive club; our objective is to boost the confidence and self-worth of these children and teach them to be able to integrate with all abilities, without making anyone feel above, or below, the other.
Parents comment to us about the change they see in their children in only a short time in the club is marvellous. All we do for this club and all our junior coaches, judges and more is all done voluntarily, through the love of what we do and to watch the change in the children’s confidence and outlook.
It is very rewarding. We have quite a few children with anxiety, low self-esteem, extreme shyness and some with learning difficulties, such as Down Syndrome, autism, physical disabilities and ADHD, to name just a few and these are the ones that we probably see the biggest change in.
How does your workplace support you in order for you to volunteer in the community?
To enable me to do this, my flexible working contract is set so that mostly I do not work on a Monday or, if I do, my shift is finished by 14:00 at the latest. If I did not have a flexible working contract none of my volunteer activity would be possible and for that I am grateful to the Trust.
What would you say to other members of staff who are keen to get involved in community volunteering activity?
Volunteer activities make such a difference to people and I get as much out of it as our members do. I have learnt so much about myself and have a sense of achievement when I see our club members gaining in confidence and ability. I’m so proud of them all. It gives you a sense of pride and identity. Everyone should do some kind of volunteer activity at some point in their lives – it’s so good for the soul.
Two HCA’s Sosamma Kuruvilla (Ward 32 Gastro) and Shijamol Isaac (Ward 23, Head & Neck) have completed and been signed off on the UHCW preparation for practice competency secondment with full support from their Ward Managers.
They will be both working as Newly Qualified Band 5 Preceptorship Nurses within the Trust.
Both HCA’s were Nurses overseas and have both been working within the Trust as HCA’s for a number of years. Both have independently completed their IELTS, CBT and OSCE’s and have obtained their NMC pin numbers. The 6 month preparation for practice competencies supported them to gain the skills and knowledge needed to work as a band 5 registrant.
Both nurses worked under the supervision of a registered Nurse and were treated as a pre registrants (similar to a 3rd year management student) and exposed to all elements of the nurses role under supervision: to include:- allocated own patients depending on ability, medicines management, admission and discharge planning, care management, care delivery, documentation, all tasks to be carried out under supervision.
We would like to congratulate them both for their hard work in achieving this; and to highlight the wonderful support received from their ward mangers.
A successful afternoon tea party event was organised in collaboration with ID Medical and
UHCW NHS Trust for our international nurses at the prestigious and historic Coombe Abbey Hotel in Coventry on the 11th of October 2021.
The event was in honour of the International Nurses who have chosen to further their nursing journey with UHCW NHS Trust. This was attended by several of our international nurses that make up 250+ recruited over the last few years.
In addition Elaine Clarke, Deputy Chief Nursing Officer, and Paula Seery, Associate Director of Nursing Workforce, expressed their appreciation and gratitude to key stakeholders who have been an integral part of the international recruitment programme.
The event was also attended by our partners ID Medical CEO, Deenu Patel, Managing Director David Newton and their team members who support with the recruitment of nurses.
ID Medical had organised a prize draw for our international nurses. Three lucky winners won a spa day for two, Hotel Chocolat gift set and a Body Shop gift set! Congratulations to all who won!
We had the opportunity to take photos in the beautiful hotel setting outdoors and seemed befitting to end the celebration with ‘Standing With Giants’ touring art installation in the Coombe gardens. The installation was created by Dan Barton and volunteers to raise funds for all NHS Trusts and in honour of all the frontline works for their hard work and dedication to keeping patients safe.
Thank you to everyone who was able to attend the International Nurses afternoon tea party event and to all who played an important part in the international recruitment programme!
We're always looking for new stories to tell in the CNO Bulletin.
While we can't guarantee everything submitted will be published, if you have anything you would like to be included in a CNO Bulletin please get in contact via the Communications Request Form which is available on TrustNav.
Tweets of the Month
And that's a wrap! Thank you to everyone who has nominated our inspiring staff for our #OSCAs2021. Well done to our winning teams and individuals and those who have been shortlisted too. You should be very proud of all you’ve done for our patients and #TeamUHCW. pic.twitter.com/4Z5kNvreKg — UHCW NHS Trust (@nhsuhcw) November 5, 2021
And that's a wrap! Thank you to everyone who has nominated our inspiring staff for our #OSCAs2021. Well done to our winning teams and individuals and those who have been shortlisted too. You should be very proud of all you’ve done for our patients and #TeamUHCW. pic.twitter.com/4Z5kNvreKg
We are committed to improving healthcare and saving lives by tackling climate change and reducing carbon emissions. We’re creating a @GreenerNHS #COP26 pic.twitter.com/sN81Q2LvJo — UHCW NHS Trust (@nhsuhcw) November 4, 2021
We are committed to improving healthcare and saving lives by tackling climate change and reducing carbon emissions. We’re creating a @GreenerNHS #COP26 pic.twitter.com/sN81Q2LvJo
At 17 Jonathan was told he would only survive another two weeks without surgery after doctors discovered a brain tumour the size of an orange. But now, 14 years later, and father to a six-month old son, Jonathan, is loving life: https://t.co/n6a2UqnMNY#BrainTumourAwarenessWeek pic.twitter.com/8BKs2YIyak — UHCW NHS Trust (@nhsuhcw) November 6, 2021
At 17 Jonathan was told he would only survive another two weeks without surgery after doctors discovered a brain tumour the size of an orange. But now, 14 years later, and father to a six-month old son, Jonathan, is loving life: https://t.co/n6a2UqnMNY#BrainTumourAwarenessWeek pic.twitter.com/8BKs2YIyak
At the going down of the sun and in the morning. We will remember them.#RemembranceDay2021 pic.twitter.com/WovdQ8FnHD — UHCW NHS Trust (@nhsuhcw) November 11, 2021
At the going down of the sun and in the morning. We will remember them.#RemembranceDay2021 pic.twitter.com/WovdQ8FnHD
The UHCW Pathway Team are off to the ANCC Conference in Atlanta @ANCCPTECon ✈️ We’ll be tweeting whilst we’re there so follow along on Twitter! @ParkerVicky_ @vickyADN @robyn_g94 pic.twitter.com/SPQZGwfmX3 — Pathway to Excellence at UHCW (@UHCWP2E) November 10, 2021
The UHCW Pathway Team are off to the ANCC Conference in Atlanta @ANCCPTECon ✈️ We’ll be tweeting whilst we’re there so follow along on Twitter! @ParkerVicky_ @vickyADN @robyn_g94 pic.twitter.com/SPQZGwfmX3
We are also LOVING the ‘skylight’ installed above this scanner - it makes the whole room feel so much bigger and we hope it will help patients to feel a little more calm whilst they’re with us ❤️ @nhsuhcw @GEHealthcare #radiology #ctscan #healthtech #patientexperience pic.twitter.com/uFT2m1dGy9 — UHCW Radiology (@RadiologyUhcw) November 18, 2021
We are also LOVING the ‘skylight’ installed above this scanner - it makes the whole room feel so much bigger and we hope it will help patients to feel a little more calm whilst they’re with us ❤️ @nhsuhcw @GEHealthcare #radiology #ctscan #healthtech #patientexperience pic.twitter.com/uFT2m1dGy9
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