HELLO and welcome to this week’s blog.
The first thing I would like to do is once again say a massive thank you from myself and all the Board for all your efforts over the past few months. Your commitment, dedication and resilience has been amazing throughout these really tough times for everyone and we really do appreciate everything you are doing.
On a personal level I have finally been able to get out and about and meet staff and discuss key areas of work recently. I met the great team in AMU and learned more about all their hard work and have been to Whitegate Drive to meet our committed OTs and discuss the importance of our work in the community. As things hopefully move back to something more like normal over the next few months I really want to say hello to more people and introduce myself.
A couple of weeks ago we wrote to all staff to say we are beginning to look at the current Trust structures and how we can make further improvements to the way we deliver care as we look to restore our services while working safely through the COVID-19 pandemic and delivering the key elements of the NHS Five Year Plan.
One of our key objectives as part of this work is to develop a new Tertiary Division by April 2021 to further enhance our excellent standing in this area. We have had a few people ask what this means which is understandable.
Tertiary services basically means the provision of specialist treatment — something we already have here in the form of our cardiac and haematology services which are highly regarded locally, regionally and nationally. We want to further develop these areas while at the same time look at further opportunities to base such specialist care within our Trust.
To maximise the potential benefits of this development however we must realign some of our other services and we are starting a programme of work to help us achieve this. That work has only just begun and we will continue to keep you informed and engaged all the way because it is vital we get your views and input into this major project.
Research and Development success
WE held our latest public Board meeting this week where we had the opportunity to report to the Non Executive
Directors and the public about the current position of the Trust and inform them of our priorities over the next few months.
With restrictions on visitors because of COVID it was the first time that the Board meeting, held on Teams, had been filmed and made available live online to the general public and a big thank you to everyone who made this possible.
There were a lot of topics discussed including performance figures, our commitment to the staff health and wellbeing and changes made because of COVID. The main presentation this month came from Dr Gavin Galasko and Angie Parker who spoke about the developments being made by our Research and Development department.
Their presentation was extremely impressive with some great developments made in recent years. Since COVID the department has played a major part in studies for treatments and the fact we have more then 200 staff members signed up for the SIREN study shows that there is a real appetite for research within the Trust. Earlier this year it was announced that the Trust had been chosen as one of only five in the country to be the site for a National Patient
Recruitment Centre which was a huge achievement. Work is ongoing to establish the centre at Blackpool Victoria Hospital ahead of its official launch which is planned for November 4th. We know we need to do more to publicise the fantastic work of the department and we will ensure we do that going forward.