STAFF UPDATE

In April, we set out a challenging Financial and Operational Plan to recover our services and move towards a sustainable future for our patients. Read more about the plan here.

Where are we?

Financially, we have reported an adverse position £3.9m off plan. This means that without further action we will be looking at a significant movement away from our total plan for the year.

Our ask to you all is to continue to be diligent in the processes we have in place to ensure: temporary staffing appropriately to maintain safer staffing levels, and non-pay spend is for essential spend to support the care of our patients, wastage is reduced and cost effectiveness is carefully considered in all decisions.

Operationally we have reported some milestones:

• We no longer have any patients waiting longer than 104 weeks

• The significant focus we have placed on our cancer performance has taken us down from the highest level of national intervention in tier 1 and removed us from the tiering system altogether.

From where we started this is significant progress and should be celebrated for all of the hard work that has contributed to achieving this.

However, the rate of recovery is slowing and we are now slightly off plan. We are looking at different options to help us keep to our trajectory in a safe, manageable way. Areas of significant challenge continue to be our ‘no criteria to reside’ and performance against the four-hour target.

The visual below provides an update for the most recent reporting month (August), as presented to our Board of Directors in the integrated performance report.

What’s coming up?

The challenging context of continued industrial action is impacting on elective recovery, but we recognise the right to strike and the efforts of colleagues who are providing cover. Colleagues have remained respectful to the personal and difficult decisions taken and we thank you for your continued professional approach to this.

Planning for winter has started and we are working through the details of how we will manage to balance the demands during what will no doubt be an incredibly challenging time across the whole of the NHS.

Thank you all for your continued efforts in this recovery and your commitment to delivering the best possible care for our patients. We understand how testing the current environment is and it is really important that alongside our focus on performance, we are all looking after each other and keeping focused on the wellbeing of our teams – so, please feel free to approach us for any help you need to support delivery and to support your team and we will do everything that we can to help. 

You can read the full version of this report on HUB

Today is day two of unprecedented joint BMA strike action by consultants and junior doctors, running until 7am Thursday 5 October.

Currently we are managing well across our services in line with our industrial action plans, and are working together to address any areas of pressure as they arise. This is thanks to the diligent and considered planning that has been done by colleagues across our community and acute services prior to the action starting – thank you to everyone involved, your efforts to maintain patient safety are heartening to see.

Trust wide our services remain very busy today and our Eastern services are working through OPEL 4 actions to try and de-escalate their position. Northern Services have provided support to Eastern Services over the last 24 hours which has been immensely helpful and the site is now also managing a challenging position going into the evening.  We have seen amazing efforts to improve flow from ED across our services but we know the next 48 hours will remain extremely busy so please continue to utilise everything available to us, including our discharge lounges, community beds, Urgent Community Response and Virtual Wards, to improve our flow position. We are not alone in our challenges, the Devon system remains in OPEL 4 and we continue to engage in system discussions to maintain clinical safety across Devon.

As we work through the next few days it is imperative that we focus all our attentions on maintaining the safe delivery of care – to support this please ensure you stand down any non-essential meetings to free up capacity.

We respect everybody’s right to take strike action, and we ask that you all continue to respect and support each other. Our togetherness as an organisation has never been more important and we are certainly feeling the strength of our collective approach. If you need support please speak to your line manager in the first instance, wellbeing support can also be found on the intranet and financial wellbeing support can be found here.

If you have any questions throughout the strike period, you can find FAQs and other helpful information on HUB as follows:

Consultants

Junior doctors

Thank you all again for everything you are doing.

The next all-staff webinar is on Friday 6 October at 1.15pm, hosted by John Palmer, Chief Operating Officer, Hannah Foster, Chief People Officer, Zahara Hyde, Director of Estates and Facilities, and Karen Davies, Medical Director - Northern services.

Join us live on MS Teams, and have your questions answered by the executive team.

If you use Pathology services in either our Eastern or Northern services we would really appreciate if you could complete the online survey below, so we can assess the level of satisfaction that our laboratory service provides for its users. This covers microbiology, histology, cellular pathology and blood sciences.

The closing date of the survey is Friday 6 October.

Please see HUB for more information and the link to take part.

Following the all staff email from Paul Roberts, Interim Chief Executive Officer, announcing the launch of the 2023 Staff Survey, our survey contractor, Picker Europe, sent email invites to most colleagues on Monday afternoon.

Some colleagues have received their invite to take part in the survey into the junk email folder instead of to their inbox. Please check your junk folder.

Please use our IT team’s top tip on HUB to avoid emails going to your junk folder for survey reminders. Our IT team is working with NHS Mail to see if they can find a solution to stop emails going into the junk folder.

For further information and Staff Survey FAQs please visit our Staff Survey HUB page.

Updates regarding response rates will go to managers and HR business partners fortnightly while the survey is live, and managers will receive a guide to the Staff Survey shortly.

The survey will close on Friday 24 November.

Any questions, please let the Employee Experience Team know; rduh.employee.experience@nhs.net

Come to our careers event on Saturday 7 October, 9am – 12.30pm at the Seamoor Unit, NDDH to find out about roles in our acute and community settings.

At the event you’ll have a chance to meet different teams and learn about the range of roles available, including the work patterns (part-time and full time both available), the patient groups you could be caring for, the range of conditions and the development opportunities too.

Ready to make the move - do you need to apply?

In most cases, no. As a registered nurse employed by the Royal Devon you won’t need to apply or have an interview for a new role in the same band. To find out the full criteria of the internal transfer process, including the forms can be found on the Hub here.

Help us reach people who should attend

This event is also open to non-Royal Devon employees, so please spread the word to your friends and contacts, if they are thinking of returning to practice, or working in private or primary care, or if they are in their final year of studies – we’d love to meet them!

For more details about the event click here.

We are holding drop in sessions with our workforce system teams to help you with your queries.

• Have you ever had a question about HealthRoster and not known who to ask?
• Want to know how to book a course on Learn +?
• Always wondered how to manage annual leave on Medirota?

No question is too big or small. Simply pop along to one of our Microsoft Teams sessions to ask yours. 

Click on the link in this document - Workforce Systems Drop In Sessions. - on the date that suits you to speak to one of our friendly team

For information about resources to support your wellbeing, please go to the our Health and Wellbeing pages

Somerset ICB has reviewed the transport service to split it between planned and unplanned transport. The respective services were due to go live on Sunday 1 October 2023, as follows: 

• Planned transport service (and discharges for non-Somerset trusts) booked as before, via the PTAC on 01278 727444 or for on the day direct with EMED.

• Unplanned, on the day transfers to or from Somerset & discharges into Somerset booked by healthcare staff.

Please contact somerset.control@emedgroup.co.uk if you have any questions.

For more information, please see NHS SOMERSET PATIENT TRANSPORT SERVICE_Planned Lot_FAQs

Join our sustainability webinar to find out about all things green at the Trust. From recycling to outdoor spaces, we will be covering a number of questions and topics raised in the recent sustainability survey.

Date: Monday 9 October

Time: 12-1pm

Click here to sign up

We apologise that colleagues across our Northern services are experiencing slow speeds and access drop-outs with the ERP system.

We appreciate the inconvenience and stress these issues are causing. The problems have been proving difficult to troubleshoot but we want to reassure you all that resolving them is our priority.

We are working closely with the system supplier, Unit4, and our Digital Services team and hope to have a resolution to the problems soon. Thank you for your patience while we work to address these issues.

Devon County Council has announced roadworks at Abbotsham Road, Bideford, on Thursday 26 October and Friday 27 October.

For full details of the road closure and alternative routes, please click here