Chief Executive Fortnightly Blog to NHS Orkney Staff – 14 October 2024
Message for All NHSO Staff
Dear All
I am mindful, including from your feedback, that we all too often focus on our challenges, where we have more to do and what we need to do to respond to our challenges. Whilst this is entirely right and proper and is central to our continuous improvement, so we know where we start from and our key issues and have plans to improve in these areas, we must spend more time recognising our progress.
On this note, let me share a good news story with you.
Last November, our Board and Senior Leadership Team committed to making progress in 6 priority areas that are central to our continuous improvement – which are:
- Corporate Strategy
- Governance
- Risk
- Improvement
- Performance
- Organisational culture
On the internal Blog link you can see our progress and just how far we have come over the last year, with lots of progress and completed actions that are moving us forward as an organisation, including our new Integrated Performance Report, Corporate Strategy, strengthened Corporate Risk Register and new Improvement Board and Planned Care Boards, and many more examples of improvements that are ‘coming soon’ in the months to come, including new Performance Review Meetings and staff experience, leadership development and culture programmes that are very much under development. We had our latest quarterly Extended Senior Leadership Team meeting last week, where we discussed many of these developments in much more detail as well as how we will continue to work even more effectively together to achieve the collective goals that are detailed in our Corporate Strategy that will further improve the experience of our patients and staff, and our role in taking the organisation forward as the most senior leaders at NHS Orkney.
And moving on to our second good news story – I want to extend my personal congratulations to Anne Gregg, Macmillan Specialist Nurse, and Amanda Manson, Cardiology Specialist Nurse, who have both been nominated for Nurse of the Year Award and Melissa Lindsay, Midwife and Sonographer, who has been nominated for Midwife of the Year Award in this year’s Scotland Health Awards. I am so proud of each of these colleagues for this fabulous achievement and for being named finalists for the outstanding work they do for our patients and community. I hope you all enjoy this special moment and the praise you have rightly received. Well done all. We’ll all be rooting for you in November as I know the rest of Orkney will be behind you.
Finally, NHS Orkney’s Annual Review will take place on Tuesday 3 December between 12-2pm and is an opportunity for our community to hear about a range of developments underway to further improve care and services for our community and patients.
The meeting will include a summary of how we did in 2023/24 against our priorities and national standards and will showcase some of the improvements we have made. The meeting will be led by our Board Chair, Meghan McEwen, and attended by myself, our Executive Team and wider Board members.
We will also describe our priorities for 2024/25 which have been agreed in response to community and patient feedback, as well as wider regional and national priorities for the Health Board.
The review will be held in a hybrid way, with the in-person attendance taking place at The Balfour in the Brodgar Room (Boardroom). A Teams link will be available so that the meeting is accessible to all and this will be shared on our website and via social media by 1 November.
There will be an opportunity for our community to ask questions at the meeting too. Please remember this includes yourself. If you’d like to ask a question, please email ork.engagement@nhs.scot. All staff are welcome and encouraged to join.
This year is a non-ministerial review of NHS Orkney’s performance during 2023/24. The session will be recorded and available on our website following the event. We hope to see some of you at the meeting (whether in person or online) so we can reconnect with you and build on the work we have started over the last 12-18 months to build more open and meaningful relationships.
Best wishes.
Laura Skaife-Knight
Chief Executive