Dear colleague,

Our staff were extremely proud to hear how Health Secretary Wes Streeting was inspired after visiting King George Hospital (KGH) last week where he found out about the work we’re doing for young adults in our community with learning difficulties.

Project Search, which launched last year at our Trust, sees us work with local partners to support people with a learning disability and/or autism into work.

It’s been a great success with four out of the first seven who joined us now working full time at our Trust.

Our teams and interns were proud to show off the programme and the impact it has had which Wes got to see first-hand when visiting Rayan on Beech Ward and Mala, who works in our Procurement department.

Speaking to BBC London on the day, Angelina, who works in our Outpatients team after joining through the programme, described it as the “best thing I could have wished for”.

A&E team win national award

Congratulations to our KGH A&E team who have jointly won a NHS Parliamentary Award with the London Ambulance Service (LAS).

The award recognises the hard work the teams have put in to ensure patients are transferred to the team at KGH within 45 minutes, allowing ambulance crews to get back on the road.

Together with LAS colleagues, we cut the average handover time from 50 minutes in early 2023 to 23 minutes by the end of the year. We also saw handovers of an hour plus drop significantly, from 38% to under 1% within less than a year helping to improve patient care, patient experience and health outcomes.

Well done team!

‘Super month’ for gynaecology

During the period of July to October, we saw the largest reduction of patients waiting more than a year of all large trusts in London.

This is thanks to initiatives like last month’s Gynaecology ‘super month’ where they treated 123 women, with 80 per cent of surgeries being major procedures.

Our waiting list for women’s health related care is our largest so significantly increasing the normal number of procedures helps treat patients quicker, including local resident Nancy who was grateful to the team for the care she received.

My thanks to everyone involved including colleagues from our Theatre and Women’s Health teams, but also our Day Surgery Unit, pre-assessment and admin teams, and staff on Iris ward.

Best wishes,

Matthew Trainer

Chief Executive