HELLO everyone and welcome to this week’s Chief Executive blog.
This week we held our latest Board meeting that was open to the public once again on Teams, It was a packed meeting with lots to discuss but one key point that was made throughout by Directors and Non Executive Directors was the praise everyone had for staff.
Our Chair, Pearse Butler, made a point of saying: “I don’t think I have ever seen the type of work I’ve seen over the past two weeks with staff dealing with COVID work, normal winter demand and other measures aimed at keeping services running. People are working extraordinary hours, seven days a week to keep things going and we cannot thank you enough.’’
I could not agree more and everyone continues to have my utmost admiration for everything so it’s a heartfelt thanks from me to all my colleagues once again – we’ve had a tough few months and there’s undoubtedly more to come. I wish that wasn’t the case but it is.
I am always humbled by the efforts you all make – driven by a desire to care for our patients. I know how much you have sacrificed to do this. Let’s be kind to each other remembering we’re all going through this in our own way. We will all have our COVID-19 story to tell and we’ll be proud to tell it.
We were able to talk about a number of things outside of COVID and focus on areas of development, especially our work around Quality Improvement (QI). The Board agreed to back a QI strategy about 12 months ago and although COVID has got in the way of our plans to some extent we have already seen a great example of QI in progress with a pressure ulcer collaborative already making huge strides reducing pressure ulcers in the acute site and in the community.
For me any successful organisation has QI embedded into its DNA and that is what we are trying to do and the support of the board is fundamental. We have only really started this journey but I can assure everyone that we feel this is key to our development as an organisation and I’m looking forward to hearing about other areas of QI improvement in the future.
We also spoke about the fantastic work that has been undertaken to develop and our improve our work around risk registers and risk management. We have been working with an organisation called the Good Governance Institute to make sure we develop national and international best practice in these areas. This is work that has gone on largely unnoticed but it is of huge importance as it gives us assurances around the safety of the organisation that will really help us moving forward.
Focusing on some great teams
THIS week has been National Pathology Week. Our fantastic team of Scientists, Technicians and Doctors have played such a major role in our response to the pandemic helping to keep our patients and staff safe. The pathology team’s work to support COVID testing and other associated work streams has been remarkable and it is good to see them in the spotlight.
It’s also been National Occupational Therapy Week and it is great that we can promote the role and value of Occupational Therapy Services across all aspects of the national Health and Social Care agenda and again a big thank you to everyone in those teams.