Suzanne Rankin
Chief Executive

This week I wanted to take the opportunity to talk about a really important upcoming initiative, focusing on improving patient care at ASPH. Autumn Action - Reset Week, is taking place 7th - 13th November, and will focus the whole Trust and partners on improving inpatient care, by challenging ourselves to do whatever we can to remove unnecessary delays for patients. Patients time is the most important currency in healthcare and how we efficiently utilise our own time and prioritise patients time is imperative.

To make the necessary care improvements at ASPH, we need to address the current challenges with patient flow from the Emergency Department / Acute Assessment Units through the hospital. During Autumn Action, the objective is to discharge more people than we admit. This will help prevent the need for medical patients to be cared for in non-medical beds, help timely assessment (in our assessment areas), and provide the right care to those who need to be in hospital.

Tom Smerdon
Director of Strategy and Sustainability

Many of you will have heard about the changes happening within our Trust over the next few years at Ashford and St. Peter’s Hospitals. We have exciting plans to improve our hospitals so we can provide the best possible experience and care to our patients, a facility with excellent amenities for staff, patients and visitors, and work with our local communities to improve health and wellbeing.

What does this mean for staff?

Staff will have access to a well-being centre that will house an indoor gym, an outdoor active area, a relaxation garden and sleep pods. They will be able to select from a choice of good quality food and refreshments with a new retail offering which will include M&S, an improved WHSmith and two new cafes amongst others. We will be building a new Urgent and Emergency Care & Assessment Unit which will transform the experience for patients and ease pressure on staff.

Suzanne Rankin
Chief Executive

This week I wanted to take the opportunity to talk about flu. Whilst it has been relatively mild and we are yet to see any widespread flu outbreaks, planning for winter and the associated pressures has been ongoing for some time, and planning to avoid flu illness and infection for Team ASPH, patients and carers, is very much a part of this.

The ASPH seasonal flu campaign began a couple of weeks ago and we’ve had a really positive start with over 1060 vaccines already given - this is a fantastic initial uptake of colleagues who’ve been vaccinated. This year we have 25 Peer Vaccinators from various divisions who have been doing a really great job of visiting colleagues within their work areas, making it as quick and efficient as possible for staff to be vaccinated. In addition to this, Occupational Health also launched the drop in flu clinic last Monday which has been taking place at St Peter’s and will be at Ashford this week. 

Dr David Fluck
Medical Director

You will have seen a number of messages last week in the build-up to World Mental Health Day which took place on 10th October. This day highlighted the importance of mental health with the key theme of suicide prevention being on the agenda for 2019. Working at ASPH our role is two-fold in that we have a responsibility to look after the mental health of our patients but also to look after our own mental health. There is a wealth of evidence showing a close link between positive staff ‘wellbeing and experiences’ and ‘increased patient safety and outcomes’. We are unable to care for others effectively if we aren’t in the best frame of mind ourselves so please remember that ‘every mind matters’.

Throughout Thursday and Friday we ran two insightful events to raise awareness of the different areas of mental health with staff and visitors across the Trust and we provided training for clinical staff on mental health topics and suicide prevention with over 60 members of staff attending. To enable us to support staff with mental health concerns and to improve staff wellbeing we are looking to recruit ‘Workplace Wellbeing Guardians’ who will be trained in mental health first aid and the first point of contact for staff and advocates for all health and wellbeing matters.