More Musings from the Medical Director

Clinical Summit

The Clinical Summit was held on Friday, 5th July 2019.  This was very successful with lots of ideas being shared and useful discussion. Professor Stephen Powis, national medical director, joined us and gave a talk on the national picture. The King’s Fund gave a presentation on transformation and Dr Chris Turner gave a presentation on Civility Saves Lives (www.civilitysaveslives.com).

There will be another Clinical Summit taking place on 22nd November 2019.  This event will be open to all.  Details of how to book a place will be provided along with the proposed agenda in early September.

Health Economy Workshop 18th July

We had a Health Economy Workshop on 18th July.  This was facilitated by The King’s Fund and was attended by more than 50 clinicians from across the borough.  The aim of the workshop was to agree some practical steps towards integration.  There was some very useful discussion and a follow up meeting planned for September.

Patient Safety

I was pleased to be able to get along to the clinical audit meeting. The quality of the presentations was to a very high standard and focused on some of the negative patient safety events we have had over the last 12 months.

There is certainly room for us to strengthen some of the process we have in place and particular attention has been turned to the cardiac and neurosurgical pathways. We will keep you updated as this work progresses, moving our focus away from image transfer to the whole process of care.

This fits in very well with our drive to become an organisation which is adopted a continuous improvement philosophy “Better Care Every Day” and also do one focused on patient safety. We are procuring a new clinical audit system which will tie together governance and NICE guidance.

We have also recently launched GREATix in the Trust.

As a Trust we strive to ensure that our patients receive excellent care. However, by focusing on the rarer occasions when something goes wrong, we are missing the opportunity to learn from what goes well. Positive learning or learning from excellence is when we look at what happened in an episode of care when an individual or team went “above and beyond” what is expected of them or there was a particularly good outcome and transfer the learning from those events to other settings.

The aim of the GREATix system is to identify, appreciate, study and learn from episodes of excellence. This has the dual benefit of improving patient care and boosting staff morale by recognising when people have given that bit extra to ensure our patients are receiving the best care we can provide at The Dudley Group NHS Foundation Trust.

Let someone know about something they did that you appreciated, when a team worked particularly well or when a pathway worked well by submitting a GREATix.   If you want more information, please check out the information that can be found on the hub.  (https://greatix.dgft.nhs.uk)

New Policies

There are a few updated policies on the Hub these include the Senior Medics Annual Leave Policy. As part of this policy, there is a new Professional Leave form.  If you require a copy of the new form, please contact my PA, Vickie Farmer, who will be able to forward it to you.

Visit to the House of Lords

The Trust’s senior clinical leaders team had the opportunity to visit the House of Lords on 4th June.  We listened with interest to Baroness Harding’s discussion around the workforce plan and the ongoing pensions issue. Baroness Harding has been invited to join us as a speaker at our next Clinical Summit in November.

Speaker at a National Conference

I have been invited to be a speaker at a national conference on Investigation and Learning from Deaths in NHS Trusts in November. Topics for discussion include learning from deaths, learning with and involving families when an incident occurs and learning from the lived experience, the role of the medical examiner, mortality governance and monitoring.

Congratulations

Mr Mushtaq Ahmed, Dr Mike Healy and Dr Elizabeth Rees have been appointed as chief of service for surgery, medicine and clinical support services respectively.

Mr Babar Elahi has been appointed clinical director for trauma & orthopaedics and specialist surgery. We thank him for his hard work as Guardian of Safe Working and also thank Mr Sohail Butt for his hard work and commitment as clinical director during his tenure. The directorates have grown and developed under his leadership and significant efforts he put in whilst in the role

Expressions of interest are currently being sought for the post of Guardian of Safe Working. The closing date is 12th August 2019. If you would like to express interest in the post you can do so by sending your CV to rebecca.edwards12@nhs.net.