Dear colleague,

The conflict in the Middle East is having a profound impact on many of our staff, especially those with links to either Israel or to Gaza. We have encouraged them to seek support, whether that’s from colleagues, Occupational Health or our Chaplaincy team. We’re also seeing an increase in London in antisemitic incidents and an increase in Islamophobia since October 7.

I expressed my sympathies to those who have been directly affected in a message I sent to all staff. I also stressed that we’re striving to become an organisation where people are treated with respect and where equality, diversity and inclusion are at the heart of how we treat one another and our patients. I made clear that hate and prejudice will not be tolerated and our job is to offer care and compassion, without judgement, to people of all races and religions.

Kickstart your nursing career at BHRUT

I’m pleased to see our nurse recruitment campaign launch this week.

For many nurses who apply, this will be some of the first nursing jobs of their career. BHRUT is a great place to start and progress their career and this video gives a flavour of why our staff love working here.

Recruiting permanent nursing staff will help to reduce the amount we pay on agency staff which will in turn help our financial position.

If you or anyone you know is interested in a nursing career, please let them know.

It was also great to see our Trust recognised by NHS Providers for our work in addressing disparities within the disciplinary process.

The case study highlighted there was no disparity between ethnic minority and white staff entering a formal disciplinary process and we were lower than the national average.

We’ve worked hard to improve the culture in the organisation and I’m pleased that this report demonstrates that.

Using AI to speed up lung cancer diagnosis

Our closer collaboration with our partners Barts Health and Homerton Healthcare is further helping our patients as we will soon be benefiting from the latest artificial intelligence (AI) tools.

This will be to help analyse x-rays and CT scans speeding up the diagnosis and treatment for our lung cancer patients.

The technology boost is part of a joint bid with our partners for government funding.

This follows on from our introduction of AI to analyse patient brain scans who had or were thought to have suffered a stroke. We were among the first trusts, together with Barts Health, to introduce this in 2021.

Alongside this, we are also using or trialling AI in five other areas of our work and are one of the first in the UK to use robotic surgery in urogynaecology, making procedures safer for our patients.

Leading the way in Radiography

Lastly, I’d like to congratulate our Radiography team who were named Team of the Year this week for the London region at the Society of Radiographer’s Awards.

Our Radiography team has transformed our service, including introducing a remote reporting team which helped reduce a backlog of over 60,000 patients awaiting x-ray results to zero over the last year. The team now report the results of most x-rays in an hour, with all reports completed within 24 hours.

Radiography also contributes 70% of activity to our Community Diagnostic Centre at Barking Community Hospital. Work is continuing on the new facility on the site which is due to open in spring 2024.

I’m thrilled to see them getting all the recognition they deserve – well done.

Have a good weekend.

Best wishes

Matthew Trainer

Chief Executive