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Issue: 7
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Friday, 17 February
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 Matt Keeling joined West Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust (WSFT) as deputy chief operating officer in January, with a focus on ensuring patients get the right care in the right place at the right time.
Matt has specific responsibilities including leading the patient flow team and managing elective access to services including cancer and diagnostics. He will also be supporting the chief operating officer, Nicola Cottington.
Matt said: “We have ambitious targets to reduce the number of people we have on our waiting list, which have to be managed against ever increasing demand for urgent and emergency care. We are working across the Trust and the system, and I am keen to hear from any colleagues with ideas on patient flow and pathways – how we can together make a difference.”
For the last two years Matt has been working with the national cancer programme team at NHS England (NHSE), which he joined during lockdown. “The team aims to deliver a long-term programme of interventions to promote early diagnosis and help people live longer. I was the transformation lead for faster diagnosis, which included the implementation of the 28-day Faster Diagnosis Standard; exploring funding options, policy, and working with the regions and Cancer Alliances to support delivery.”
 Neurology consultant, Dr Kate Maresh, has recently received the 2022 Dubowitz Prize. This is awarded by the Dubowitz Neuromuscular Centre for the best paper published by the centre that year.
Duchenne muscular dystrophy is a very serious condition that affects young boys. Kate’s winning paper – ‘Startle responses in Duchenne muscular dystrophy: a novel biomarker of brain dystrophin deficiency’ – discusses the recent discovery that the condition not only causes muscle weakness but also affects the function of the brain.
Kate was previously a specialty registrar at the Dubowitz Centre and the Trust is delighted that she has been recognised with this prestigious award.
Congratulations Kate!
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Ash Wednesday service
To mark Ash Wednesday on Wednesday, 22 February which marks the beginning of Lent, the chaplaincy is holding a service at 12.30pm on that day.
This will take place at the chapel on the West Suffolk Hospital site.
Country music night in aid of My WiSH charity
One of Ireland’s rising country music stars, Stacy Breen, will be performing at the British Sugar Sports and Social Club in aid of My WiSH charity on Friday, 24 March.
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 The charity is delighted to have provided not one, but two bladder scanners to our stroke and cardiac wards. We hope this donation worth £20,000 will go a long way to improving the quality of care the Trust provides.
The charity has worked on a medical improvement event with improvement project manager, Andrea Ballentine, who said: “We were thrilled to get so many ideas for improvement from our staff, many of these were ideas to improve patient experience. My WiSH have been instrumental in helping us to implement some of these ideas including purchasing these bladder scanners.”
These two scanners will go a long way to ensuring there is consistent and easy access to a scanner which will reduce the delay between scans and getting their results.
Maria Musgrove, ward manager for G8, said: The bladder scanner is used so frequently on the stroke unit. Having to send staff to other areas to borrow equipment is never ideal, it takes them away from providing patient care and can delay assessment and treatment.
“Having our own scanner available on the ward makes such a difference in carrying out prompt assessment of patients and therefore providing the appropriate treatment in a timely manner. Thank you so much to My WiSH for providing us with this equipment. It truly has made such a difference.”
Enhancing care and supporting staff is exactly what we do, so it was fantastic to be included in this improvement project and we have some great ideas in the pipeline which we hope will make a difference.
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 Smoking cessation for Suffolk residents
Colleagues with a Suffolk postcode can access the new face-to-face smoking cessation service from Friday, 24 February.
Delivered in partnership with OneLife Suffolk, the clinic will be held every Friday from 10am to 2pm in the main outpatient’s area at West Suffolk Hospital.
If you would like to find out more information, please contact tobacco.dependence@wsh.nhs.uk.
Colleagues who live outside of Suffolk can access smoking cessation support from Smokefree Norfolk, the Essex Wellbeing Service or Healthy You in Cambridgeshire and Peterborough.
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Financial wellbeing – childcare and young families
Money and the rising cost of living affects us all. Your financial wellbeing is important to us. The financial wellbeing guide on the intranet here has been created to share all the advice, tools and support available across a number of money-related topics to help you find the things that are most useful for them.
Each week The Green Sheet is focusing on a different area of the guide. This week, we’re focusing on childcare and young families.
These resources are there to support you and your family, from free school meals to school uniform discounts.
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How to create an emergency fund
The head of financial education at Salary Finance, Jason Butler, has written a blog to help you make the most of your money and boost your savings.
When financial problems come along, they tend to happen at exactly the wrong time, for example, when your car needs a new tire, you need to make an unexpected trip to the dentist, or your boiler needs a major repair.
At a time when saving money is incredibly difficult, Salary Finance have shared some creative ways to create extra cash for those unexpected costs.
You can read the blog here, or watch the main points in this quick video.
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 Break the mould: leading for system change
Are you a colleague with a passion for delivering something completely new to achieve better outcomes for patients through collaboration across the system?
If this sounds like you, the Suffolk and North East Essex Integrated Care System (SNEE ICS) are asking you to be a part of the ‘Leading for System Change’ programme delivered by the NHS Leadership Academy.
The programme will support, encourage and enable colleagues working in any setting to ‘break the mould’ to do something amazing. If you are interested in joining, please send your expression of interest by completing the form available at the link to Rachel.Austin@wsh.nhs.uk by the end of Friday, 17 February.
This is a free of charge course beginning in April 2023.
Further details are available on their website, with an online information event taking place at 1pm on Wednesday 22 February. Please contact Robert.Perrement@suffolk.nhs.uk for details.
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Funded places available on the Rosalind Franklin and Mary Seacole NHS Leadership Programmes
There are funded places available on the Rosalind Franklin and Mary Seacole NHS Leadership Programmes.
The nine-month Rosalind Franklin programme is designed for mid-level clinician and non-clinician leaders aspiring to lead large and complex programmes, departments, services and systems.
Online clinical supervision training
Clinical supervision is vital for all healthcare practitioners, helping to maintain and improve standards of care by reflecting on and establishing workable strategies for future work.
These sessions are suitable for all supervisors and supervisees holding a clinical caseload (band 4 and above), who are wanting to upskill and learn best practice for providing and receiving clinical supervision.
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Is cancer care the route for you?
Are you a band 5 registered nurse looking to develop your career in cancer care?
Are you interested in applying for a 12-month award winning development programme?
Patient safety incident response framework training
As the Trust approaches one year since the go-live of the patient safety incident response framework (PSIRF), the patient safety team would like to invite colleagues to participate in a virtual workshop to develop the PSIRF for 2023/24.
Neurodiversity webinars
The NHS East of England Leadership Academy have announced a series of webinars facilitated by Purple as part of Neurodiversity Celebration Week 2023.
These interactive webinars will be delivered by neurodiverse facilitators giving context and real-world experience that can be built upon.
They will provide insights across a range of topics and can be accessed as stand-alone sessions or as a series to build on the learning.
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The Green Sheet is produced weekly by the Trust communications team Editorial submissions deadline: Tuesday, 5pm.
Please send submissions, queries and feedback to GreenSheet@wsh.nhs.uk
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