Angela's update - 10 June 2022

The highlight of my week has been presenting around 50 colleagues with long service certificates. It was great to do this for the first time since the beginning of the pandemic and I was humbled by the dedication our colleagues have shown. We’ve got many more to give in the coming weeks so if you are waiting for yours you will be contacted! They’re not the only people celebrating this week – my congratulations also go to our SASH+ lean for leaders cohort 20 who had their celebration event this week. It’s great to have more experts trained in our improvement methodology. I look forward to seeing how you are using the methodology when I’m out on a genba walk!

This week we welcomed 39 new nursing colleagues who have joined us from overseas. I’m very pleased you’ve chosen to be part of our One Team and I wish you all the very best at the start of your careers with us!

Thanks again to everyone who kept our services running over the jubilee weekend. Since the bank holiday we’ve had some of the highest attendances at our emergency department we’ve ever seen. Colleagues from many teams have therefore had to manage a very busy hospital this week and I recognise it’s not been easy - keep going! The most important thing is to keep patients safe. I know that for many of you this means you are having to help by supporting teams that are under pressure, transferring patients, giving out meals and other tasks outside of your usual role. Thank you; these are extraordinary times and we must all help wherever needed to keep patients safe.

On Wednesday we were proud to host a Kent Surrey Sussex Academic Health Science Network event, focussed on unlocking the power of innovation. It showcased to NHS England some successes of partnership working in our region and how there is great potential to bring the NHS, scientists, industry and other public sector bodies together to improve outcomes. I valued the discussions - particularly on how we should challenge ourselves to think very differently about services in the future in order to reduce health inequalities.

One way we’ll do this in our patch is through our use of data. Yesterday Dr Richard Brown, director of outcomes, held a workshop focusing on how we can develop our data and analytics strategy across the East Surrey Place.  This is the first step towards a new approach to bringing together all the information we have across the different parts of our geography. The aim is to harness the power of our data to improve the health, wellbeing and outcomes for our population as well as addressing inequalities in health access and outcomes. There were attendees from local authority, primary care, community as well as colleagues from the ICS who set out the Surrey Heartlands data strategy. As we move forward into a more digital world the need to help people understand data and how to use it becomes more and more important. To help this Richard will be hosting monthly data drop ins, these will cover a range of topics including how to get the most out of our performance dashboards, what is model hospital and how to use it, and much more! Please keep an eye out for the launch in the coming weeks.

Yesterday also marked 100 days until our eSASH go live. This is hugely exciting - we’re on the home straight with the biggest change to how we work now in sight. Please don’t underestimate what this change will mean for you - it’s not just an update to Cerner where things will look a little different, it will fundamentally change the way you work. So, it’s really crucial that everyone gets ready for this - if you use our Cerner EPR, you need to complete eLearning. Please book in now!

Thank you to everyone involved in promoting Carers Week throughout SASH in the last few days. It’s been excellent to see the profile of carers raised and the ways in which we are supporting them. This coincided with volunteers week and I was so pleased to read our colleagues explaining on social media and in our bulletins why our volunteers are so important. I’d like to add my thanks for your enormous contribution.
 

Finally, well done to Angela Stoker, Sara Begg and their colleagues for organising the party many SASH colleagues attended over the jubilee weekend. I’ve heard it was a great success, with Dom Fitzmaurice’s band providing the entertainment and around £1,000 raised for SASH Charity – fantastic!

Best wishes
Angela Stevenson
Chief executive