I hope you are having a good week. Well done to the England team for a superb win against Germany.  Fingers crossed for Saturday night!

Tony is enjoying a well-earned break, so I am pleased to share this update with you.

Continued investment in our hospitals

We know how crucial the environment is when caring for our patients because their experience is not about treatment alone.

Across our two hospitals we are continuing to invest and upgrade in our facilities, with a capital investment totalling £46m in the last financial year (2020/21).

We will be investing a further £39m this current financial year (2021/22), which is a significant increase on the £7m we received in 2018/19.

At King George Hospital, we’ve invested £9m in the last 12 months as we continue to improve and enlarge our Emergency Department, upgrade our MRI and CT equipment and update our facilities. An additional £12m will be spent over the next year to ensure we meet the needs of our patients.

At Queen’s Hospital, £7.5m will be spent on a new, modern, Critical Care Unit (CCU) which will provide flexibility as it allows us to easily increase the number of beds quickly when there is additional demand. The CCU at King George Hospital is also being expanded; we are investing £4m to double its size. Both CCUs are due to be complete by the end of the year, which will help us deal with increased demand over the winter months.

Last month we also opened a Children and Young People’s Assessment Unit at Queen’s, which will help reduce the number of admissions to our hospitals.

We look forward to keeping you updated on our progress.

‘Super’ clinics

The pandemic has had a big impact on waiting lists across the country and we’re focusing on a number of initiatives to reduce the backlog of appointments.

To aid us in our recovery, we’re holding several ‘super’ clinics to carry out a large number of appointments and procedures over a short period of time.

These have included our ‘Back2Backs’ spinal review super clinic, which saw 119 patients on Saturday 12 June, as well as our ongoing Scalpel Project, which has so far seen 550 patients across three days. Several Scalpel clinics will be held over the coming weeks, as we aim to complete the ‘1,000 patient challenge’.

Last week, we also held a special ‘Bones R Us’ clinic, which was a focused effort by our Trauma and Orthopaedics team across five days in which they saw 60 patients.

Well done to all involved in these fantastic initiatives, as we continue to focus our efforts on getting our patients the care they need.

Become a patient partner

Volunteers are an extremely important part of our teams and the time they dedicate to help others makes a big difference.

We’re currently recruiting new voluntary patient partners to help us understand what matters most to our patients during their experience with us.

They help us challenge ourselves and make improvements to the care we provide and we continue to be committed in ensuring patients' voices are heard.

If you know someone who may be interested in these voluntary roles, please email our Patient Experience team

All opportunities to get involved with our Trust are on our website.

Stroke matron appointed to international committee

Congratulations to Millie Krasinka-Chavez, a matron in our Stroke team, who has been appointed to the Health Economics Steering Committee of the European Stroke Organisation (ESO) in Geneva.

The committee develops exemplar stroke services across Europe and Millie will work with other professionals to improve the care given to patients across the continent.

This is a fantastic achievement for Millie, who will combine the role with her continued work at our Trust. Well done!

Celebrating Pride

Finally, thank you to everyone who contributed to our Pride month celebrations, helping us promote equality and diversity for all of our staff, patients and partners.

It was lovely to celebrate Pride at our final event of the month yesterday with our LGBT+ network.  Mike Dixie, our Chief Pharmacy Technician sang so well!

Best wishes to all of you.

Ben

Ben Morrin
Deputy Chief Executive