You, me and the whole team too – Diane Wake’s blog

It is great to be writing the
directors blog this week as I reflect on the last two years I have been here. We have had our challenges and ups and downs
through inspections and ratings and staff feeling low morale and
increased pressure. However what does come out loud and clear in Dudley is the quality of our staff and their amazing resilience.

We still have some way to go with our regulators to assure them that we are providing the very best care we can because I know we are. There are examples of outstanding practice across the trust, end of life care, surgery referral to treatment times are amongst the best in the country, as are many of our outcomes for these patients, stroke service continue to outperform their peers and we have world leading GI and vascular services.

I want the world to know how good Dudley is and we will do everything in our power to make sure people hear our stories of success, all too often this last two years the media have chosen to focus on the negative and we now need to show them the good stuff and there is a lot of it!

It was timely that the NHS interim people plan was launched recently and I hope many of you will have had a read because it chimes entirely with what staff have told us they want from our Trust. Through your responses to the national staff survey, our staff friends and family test and of course the hugely popular ‘make it happen’ events we have had feedback from thousands of staff about what it’s like to work here and what we can improve. The key themes coming out loud and clear are:-

  • Communication
  • Behaviours
  • Development opportunities

We have a Dudley People Plan which has been formed from the feedback you have given us and is aligned to the national NHS Interim People Plan.

The main aims of the Dudley People Plan will be:

  • A workforce for now and the future: making Dudley the place people want to be and stay
  • A caring, kind and compassionate place: we will support people to have joy in work and to treat each other with compassion and kindness
  • Equality, fairness and inclusion: we will have an inclusive culture where we all believe in and live by our Trust values
  • Improvement and development culture: we will create a place that supports you becoming what you want to be and where there are opportunities for development and improvement for everyone.
  • Use technology to innovate : we will create a place that embraces technology to support different ways of working.

One of the first things we will be doing is to launch a behaviour framework for everyone that will support us all in living our values of care, respect and responsibility and showing kindness for our colleagues. There will be more on this at my team brief next week so make sure you pop along.

Making sure all our people feel they have a positive experience at work engaged is my number one priority, people being comfortable to share good news and concerns is vital to making Dudley a great place to work. I am passionate about every member of staff having a voice and being able to influence and everyone’s feedback is so important to delivering our People Plan.

Which brings me onto the very exciting Committed to Excellence awards. The Oscars style event takes place next Friday 5th July and I want to say congratulations to everyone who was nominated and good luck to all our finalists. The standard of nominations this year was incredible and made the judging panel’s job a very difficult one. Of course I’d love to give everyone an award as you are all so deserving.

Engagement being crucial to delivering excellent services make sure you pop along to the Clinical Summit happening on the 5th July, also at the Copthorne Hotel in Brierley Hill where we will be hearing from guest speakers Professor Stephen Powis, NHS Medical Director, the Kinds Fund and Dr Chris Turner on Civility saves lives. To register contact Becky Edwards at Rebecca.edwards12@nhs.net

Then on the 18th July we have an MCP clinical event open to all to help share, shape and plan the future of the MCP supported by the Kings Fund. The afternoon will provide an opportunity to discuss the priorities for clinical care, the opportunities for enabling clinical integration and to agree some practical next steps for pursuing a shared vision. Contact  Rebecca.edwards12@nhs.net if you’d like to attend.