Welcome
Welcome to Inside St John’s, bringing you the latest news from the hospital.
NHSScotland Staff Survey 2015
Every member of NHS staffhas the opportunity to participate in the survey which will be live until 21 September.
Acute Corporate Services and Astley Ainslie Hospitalare leading the way with92 per cent and 64 per cent of staff respectively having already completed the survey. Well done to them. The percentage of staff who have completed the survey overall is sitting at19 per cent.
There are 3 ways to participate in this year’s survey:
1.Pick up a paper survey pack (these will be located across our sites, including wards)and return in the Freepost envelope back to Capita
2.Ring the Capita Surveys and Research Freephone number to speak to a researcher: 0800 587 3115
3.Complete online using a PC/laptop/tablet or smart phone.
For those of you with an email address you will receive a personal invitation to complete a questionnaire online from , which will give you secure details on how to access the survey.
This year staff participating in the survey have the opportunity to take part in a prize draw to win Amazon vouchers. Please be assured that your survey and responses will remain anonymous.
We ask you please to take the time to complete the questionnaire and encourage your teams to participate.
Clinical Change Forum – next event
The next event in the series of Clinical Change Forum meetings will take place on Wednesday 30 September 2015. More details and videos from the last event will be available shortly.
You can find further information on the Clinical Change Forum here.
NMC Revalidation
The NMC are introducing a new revalidation process. All nurses and midwives are asked to register with the NMC website, identify your revalidation date (termed ‘Renewal Date’ on the website) and inform your line manager.
Further information can be found on the intranet.
Trakcare Paper LiteProgramme
Ecasenotes
Work is ongoing to improve the usability of eCasenotes:
- Multiple documents can now be viewed by selecting the documents you wish to view then selecting the ‘multiple documents’ button.
- Colour images – thank you to everyone who has helped assess the quality of scanned colour images – the vast majority of specialties consider the quality to be high enough for clinical use. A reminder that you can access the Medical Photography system (MIM) directly from the ‘other results’ tab from the ‘results’ menu.
- We are investigating compressing coloured images (without impacting the quality) so that multiple coloured images can be viewed in a single pdf.
Nursing and AHP Forums
These are now live across all wards at SJH. Thank you to all the nurses and AHPs at SJH for supporting this implementation - we hope you are now seeing the benefits of your work.
Clerking
Discussion is ongoing with the SJH implementation group to agree a plan for the implementation of electronic clerking/admission.For further information please see clickhereor contact Sandra MacGillivray, eHealth Project Manager at
Patient eCommunications Project
The project team continues to gather information on letters to patients across a variety of specialties at SJH.
For some letter producing areas, that are already signed off and ready to go live, the implementation has been temporarily paused to allow an upgraded version of the MyMail software to be installed and will begin again once this has been completed.
The upgraded software has a cleaner user interface, provides a new mechanism for signing patients up to be able to receive their letters across the electronic portal, as well as other additional benefits.
Merging Primary Assessment Area (PAA) and Medical Assessment Unit (MAU)
In order to meet the needs of our patients who present to SJH as a medical emergency, or have an unplanned attendance, we are redesigning our assessment areas.
Phase One will mean that from 10 August, PAA will be located within the MAU footprint. The easiest entrance is via the Coronary Care Unit door on the main corridor. We would ask you to be patient as we merge PAA into MAU and then begin major building works over the coming months
Phase Two will bring structural changesto the MAU footprint. This work may be noisy and there will be safety measures put in place, when visiting MAU,while the works are being undertaken. This is likely to take up to three months.
If you have any questions please direct them to Jacquie Campbell, Site Director, Anne B Smith, General Manager, Agnes Ritchie, Associate Nurse Director
orCarolyn Swift, Service Improvement Manager.
A New Counselling Room for the Department of Spiritual Care
Work is now complete onthe new counseling room for the Department of Spiritual Care. The new space provides an improved setting in which the chaplains may offer generic, person-centered spiritual care to outpatients, visitors and relatives.
Staff support has also become an important feature of the work of the chaplains, in the form of spiritual and bereavement care, pastoral supervision and group reflective practice – the ultimate aim of which is to help promote the compassionate care of patients by well resourced and motivated staff.
The new room reflects the importance of spiritual care in the task and art of healing and will help SJH to continue to become what the writer Thomas Moore calls ‘a hospital with soul’.
Redesign of the Special Care Baby Unit 2014/15
The Special Care Baby Unit at SJHopened in 1989. Since then, there have been significant advances in newborn care and the unit has been completely redesigned and refurbished with the installation of new, modern facilities for both babies and their families. The service moved back into the refurbished areain March this year.
The new unit provides ten cots with modern clinical facilities for newborn babies who require specialist care. The design also focuses on the provision of family-centred care with the inclusion of two bedrooms with en-suite facilities allowing parents to ‘room in’ with their baby before discharge, a family room with a small kitchen area and a counselling room for parents.
MSP visit to Labour Ward
Angela Constance MSP and Fiona Hyslop MSP will visit the newly refurbished Labour Ward and SCBU on 28 August. They will take look around the new modern, facilities and meet staff on the ward. An event to officially open the refurbished facility will be held on 8 September.
Specialist Nurse
We are delighted to announce that a new member of staff will be joining the medical unit as a specialist nurse in elderly medicine. Louise MacKay, from Forth Valley, will bring enthusiasm and expertise to this exciting opportunity. She will be assessing patients aged over 65, attending SJH for medical assessment, working closely with the hospital geriatricians, ward staff and community, including the REACT team. She will be proactively identifying frailty within the elderly population and initiating Comprehensive Geriatric Assessment (CGA), where relevant, thereby improving the pathway for frail elderly patients within West Lothian. We are delighted to welcome her to the hospital at the beginning of September.
If you wish to learn more about developments within our Frail Elderly Programme across West Lothian our intranet page will be updated as we progress, click here.
Farewell from Laura Mancini, PA to Site Director
“After 21 years service I am moving on to pastures new. While I am excited about the change there are a lot of people I will miss.
“I have worked in several departments over the years and have good memories to take away with me. In particular, I completed a 12 hour ‘spinathon’ and other charity events to raise £10k for an incubator for the Special Care Baby Unit.
“I will miss the award winning catering that we have at St John’s and doing laps of the corridors to keep fit. I wish all the staff at St John’s all the best for the future.”
NHS Lothian WW1 Project
The NHS Lothian World War One Project, ‘Researching the Past to Innovate for the Future’, will launch at a public lecture given by Yvonne McEwen, Scotland’s War Project Director, on Thursday 24 September at 6pm in the Lecture Theatre at the Western General Hospital.
The project aims to recognise the contribution made by healthcare staff from the Lothian area to caring for those impacted upon by the events of WW1.
The event is being held the evening before the 100th anniversary of the Battle of Loos in which it is estimated that 30,000 Scots soldiers were involved.
The Lothian Health Service Archive will be exhibiting a number of historical artefacts related to local health service provision during World War One.
The event is open to all NHS Lothian staff as well as the public and you can register for tickets here.
We would also welcome some feedback on the NHS Innovation Programme and so have put together a short survey. It will only take a couple of minutes to complete.
The output from this will be used to inform how we proceed in developing a more collaborativeapproach to our innovation workstream and provide staff with increased opportunity to participate.
You can access the surveyhere.
Seasonal Flu Vaccination
The seasonal flu vaccination campaign is soon to get underway with the launch planned for the start of October. As part of the campaign we are looking for volunteers to assist in giving staff their free, seasonal flu jab at staff flu clinics across NHS Lothian.
As a responsible workforce it is important that as many staff as possible are protected, ensuring the safety and wellbeing of staff and patients. A vaccination is the best way to help protect against this potentially serious but preventable disease.
The more volunteers we have, the more we will be able to provide accessible clinics on site including at point of work for our staff.
We need your help again this year and any staff member who can help should please contact Patricia McIntosh at: or Andrew McArthur at