Dear colleague,

The Health Secretary was very positive after his recent visit to our Urgent Treatment Centre, run by PELC, at King George Hospital.

Colleagues showed Mr Streeting around the department where he was impressed by the work our teams are doing to treat patients quicker and commented: “This is a great model that I would like to see replicated across the country.”

With the help of PELC over the past two years, our overall A&E performance has significantly improved going from one of the worst in the country to the top 20 in recent months.

It’s a real credit to everyone involved.

103 nurses joining our Trust

Over the weekend, we held our biggest ever recruitment event offering jobs to 103 nurses.

The majority are students who will join us from September, once they’ve completed their training, alongside nine fully qualified nurses.

Among them are five nurses specialising in patients with learning disabilities (LDs). This was a  commitment we made following the death of Chloe Every, 27, who had learning disabilities, after the coroner raised concerns about an absence of LD nurses to help her communicate in a prevention of further deaths report.

Four more LD nurses are being interviewed in the next week.

The nurses will work across our wards and A&Es and will have a positive impact on the care we provide.

A great intervention!

I’d like to congratulate our interventional neuroradiology team after successfully expanding our mechanical thrombectomy service to operate 24/7.

From late October to the end of January, our teams performed 120 life-saving procedures on patients who had a stroke.

In some cases when a patient has a stroke, it can either be treated quickly with drugs or a procedure called a mechanical thrombectomy.

The procedure treats the precise location by guiding a device through blood vessels in the brain to make repairs and remove blockages.

This was implemented to support The Royal London Hospital during the replacement of their specialist equipment.

They treated patients not only from our local area but also from Kent, Suffolk, and across the East of England.

This is a remarkable achievement, and I want to thank everyone involved in making this possible.

Have a great weekend.

Best wishes,

Matthew Trainer

Chief Executive