August 2015
Welcome
Welcome to Inside St John’s, bringing
you the latest news from the hospital.
NHSScotland Staff Survey 2015
Every member of NHS staff has the
opportunity to participate in the survey
which will be live until 21 September.
Acute Corporate Services and Astley
Ainslie Hospital are leading the way
with 92 per cent and 64 per cent of staff
respectively having already completed
the survey. Well done to them. The
percentage of staff who have completed
the survey overall is sitting at 19 per cent.
There are 3 ways to participate in this
year’s survey:
1. Pick up a paper survey pack (these
will be located across our sites, including
wards) and return in the Freepost
envelope back to Capita
2. Ring the Capita Surveys and
Research Freephone number to speak to
a researcher: 0800 587 3115
3. Complete online using a
PC/laptop/tablet or smart phone.
For those of you with an email address
you will receive a personal invitation to
complete a questionnaire online from
ScotlandNHSSurvey@capita.co.uk,
which will give you secure details on how
to access the survey.
This year staff participating in the survey
have the opportunity to take part in a
prize draw to win Amazon vouchers.
Please be assured that your survey and
responses will remain anonymous.
We ask you please to take the time to
complete the questionnaire and
encourage your teams to participate.
Clinical Change Forum – next
event
The next event in the series of Clinical
Change Forum meetings will take place
on Wednesday 30 September 2015.
More details and videos from the last
event will be available shortly.
You can find further information on the
Clinical Change Forum here.
NMC Revalidation
The NMC are introducing a new
revalidation process. All nurses and
midwives are asked to register with the
NMC website, identify your revalidation
date (termed ‘Renewal Date’ on the
website) and inform your line manager.
Further information can be found on the
intranet.
Trakcare Paper Lite Programme
Ecasenotes
Work is ongoing to improve the usability
of eCasenotes:
1. Multiple documents can now be
viewed by selecting the documents
you wish to view then selecting the
‘multiple documents’ button.
2. Colour images – thank you to
everyone who has helped assess the
quality of scanned colour images –
the vast majority of specialties
consider the quality to be high enough
for clinical use. A reminder that you
can access the Medical Photography
system (MIM) directly from the ‘other
results’ tab from the ‘results’ menu.
3. We are investigating compressing
coloured images (without impacting
the quality) so that multiple coloured
images can be viewed in a single pdf.
Nursing and AHP Forums
These are now live across all wards at
SJH. Thank you to all the nurses and
AHPs at SJH for supporting this
implementation - we hope you are now
seeing the benefits of your work.
Clerking
Discussion is ongoing with the SJH
implementation group to agree a plan for
the implementation of electronic
clerking/admission. For further
information please see click here or
contact Sandra MacGillivray, eHealth
Project Manager at
sandra.macgillivray@nhslothian.scot.nhs.uk
Patient eCommunications
Project
The project team continues to gather
information on letters to patients across a
variety of specialties at SJH.
For some letter producing areas, that are
already signed off and ready to go live,
the implementation has been temporarily
paused to allow an upgraded version of
the MyMail software to be installed and
will begin again once this has been
completed.
The upgraded software has a cleaner
user interface, provides a new
mechanism for signing patients up to be
able to receive their letters across the
electronic portal, as well as other
additional benefits.
Merging Primary Assessment
Area (PAA) and Medical
Assessment Unit (MAU)
In order to meet the needs of our patients
who present to SJH as a medical
emergency, or have an unplanned
attendance, we are redesigning our
assessment areas.
Phase One will mean that from 10
August, PAA will be located within the
MAU footprint. The easiest entrance is
via the Coronary Care Unit door on the
main corridor. We would ask you to be
patient as we merge PAA into MAU and
then begin major building works over the
coming months
Phase Two will bring structural changes
to the MAU footprint. This work may be
noisy and there will be safety measures
put in place, when visiting MAU, while the
works are being undertaken. This is likely
to take up to three months.
If you have any questions please direct
them to Jacquie Campbell, Site Director,
Anne B Smith, General Manager, Agnes
Ritchie, Associate Nurse Director
or Carolyn Swift, Service Improvement
Manager.
A New Counselling Room for the
Department of Spiritual Care
Work is now complete on the new
counseling room for the Department of
Spiritual Care. The new space provides
an improved setting in which the
chaplains may offer generic, personcentered spiritual care to outpatients,
visitors and relatives.
Staff support has also become an
important feature of the work of the
chaplains, in the form of spiritual and
bereavement care, pastoral supervision
and group reflective practice – the
ultimate aim of which is to help promote
the compassionate care of patients by
well resourced and motivated staff.
The new room reflects the importance of
spiritual care in the task and art of healing
and will help SJH to continue to become
what the writer Thomas Moore calls ‘a
hospital with soul’.
Redesign of the Special Care
Baby Unit 2014/15
The Special Care Baby Unit at SJH
opened in 1989. Since then, there have
been significant advances in newborn
care and the unit has been completely
redesigned and refurbished with the
installation of new, modern facilities for
both babies and their families. The
service moved back into the refurbished
area in March this year.
The new unit provides ten cots with
modern clinical facilities for newborn
babies who require specialist care. The
design also focuses on the provision of
family-centred care with the inclusion of
two bedrooms with en-suite facilities
allowing parents to ‘room in’ with their
baby before discharge, a family room with
a small kitchen area and a counselling
room for parents.
MSP visit to Labour Ward
Angela Constance MSP and Fiona
Hyslop MSP will visit the newly
refurbished Labour Ward and SCBU on
28 August. They will take look around the
new modern, facilities and meet staff on
the ward. An event to officially open the
refurbished facility will be held on 8
September.
Specialist Nurse
We are delighted to announce that a new
member of staff will be joining the
medical unit as a specialist nurse in
elderly medicine. Louise MacKay, from
Forth Valley, will bring enthusiasm and
expertise to this exciting opportunity. She
will be assessing patients aged over 65,
attending SJH for medical assessment,
working closely with the hospital
geriatricians, ward staff and community,
including the REACT team. She will be
proactively identifying frailty within the
elderly population and initiating
Comprehensive Geriatric Assessment
(CGA), where relevant, thereby improving
the pathway for frail elderly patients
within West Lothian. We are delighted to
welcome her to the hospital at the
beginning of September.
If you wish to learn more about
developments within our Frail Elderly
Programme across West Lothian our
intranet page will be updated as we
progress, click here.
Farewell from Laura Mancini,
PA to Site Director
“After 21 years service I am moving on to
pastures new. While I am excited about
the change there are a lot of people I will
miss.
“I have worked in several departments
over the years and have good memories
to take away with me. In particular, I
completed a 12 hour ‘spinathon’ and
other charity events to raise £10k for an
incubator for the Special Care Baby Unit.
“I will miss the award winning catering
that we have at St John’s and doing laps
of the corridors to keep fit. I wish all the
staff at St John’s all the best for the
future.”
NHS Lothian WW1 Project
The NHS Lothian World War One Project,
‘Researching the Past to Innovate for the
Future’, will launch at a public lecture
given by Yvonne McEwen, Scotland’s
War Project Director, on Thursday 24
September at 6pm in the Lecture Theatre
at the Western General Hospital.
The project aims to recognise the
contribution made by healthcare staff
from the Lothian area to caring for those
impacted upon by the events of WW1.
The event is being held the evening
before the 100th anniversary of the Battle
of Loos in which it is estimated that
30,000 Scots soldiers were involved.
The Lothian Health Service Archive will
be exhibiting a number of historical
artefacts related to local health service
provision during World War One.
The event is open to all NHS Lothian staff
as well as the public and you can register
for tickets here.
The output from this will be used to
inform how we proceed in developing a
more collaborative approach to our
innovation workstream and provide staff
with increased opportunity to participate.
You can access the survey here.
Seasonal Flu Vaccination
The seasonal flu vaccination campaign is
soon to get underway with the launch
planned for the start of October. As part
of the campaign we are looking for
volunteers to assist in giving staff their
free, seasonal flu jab at staff flu clinics
across NHS Lothian.
As a responsible workforce it is important
that as many staff as possible are
protected, ensuring the safety and
wellbeing of staff and patients. A
vaccination is the best way to help protect
against this potentially serious but
preventable disease.
The more volunteers we have, the more
we will be able to provide accessible
clinics on site including at point of work
for our staff.
We need your help again this year and
any staff member who can help should
please contact Patricia McIntosh at:
Patricia.McIntosh@nhslothian.scot.nhs.uk or
Andrew McArthur at
Andrew.McArthur@nhslothian.scot.nhs.uk
We would also welcome some feedback
on the NHS Innovation Programme and
so have put together a short survey. It will
only take a couple of minutes to
complete.
This is your site newsletter and we want to hear from you about what’s going on
in your service.
Please send stories to lothian.communications@nhs.net