Chief Executive Fortnightly Blog to NHS Orkney Staff – 22 January 2024

Message for All NHS Orkney Staff 

Dear Team Orkney

Firstly, recognising we had lots of weather challenges here last week thank you to you all for ensuring disruption to our services was kept to an absolute minimum for our patients and local community. There were so many examples of teamwork at its very best and I’d like to say an extra special thank you to you all. I’d also like to say a big thanks to our external partners, including Coastguards, the Police, Orkney Islands Council and members of our community, for their help and response to the snowy weather and for working so well together to help to keep our community safe.

I start my blog this week by saying a really warm welcome to Dr Anna Lamont, our new substantive Medical Director, who joins Team Orkney today and thank you to Dr Malcolm Metcalfe for covering the Interim Medical Director post over the past few months and for his contributions during his time at NHS Orkney.

Anna, a GP by background, brings significant experience and a proven track-record of delivery to NHS Orkney in a number of key areas that are central to our ongoing journey of improvement, including Clinical Governance, multi-disciplinary team working, clinical engagement and clinical strategy development and delivery. I know from speaking to Anna in the run up to today that she looks forward to meeting you in the weeks and months to come as she starts her induction and getting to know Team Orkney and our wonderful organisation.

By March of this year, when Jay O’Brien joins us as our new Director of People and Culture, we will have a fully substantive Executive Team, which will bring much-needed stability to the organisation. One of the main areas of focus in my first 12 months in post as I described on my day one, has been to bring leadership stability, recognising that too much change and churn at the top of the organisation is unhelpful and impacts on us moving forward at the required pace. So this development, along with a number of other wider senior leadership appointments that have been made, is a welcome step forward that signals another important foundation and building block that is in place as we continue our improvement journey.

Thanks to those who joined our first Corporate Strategy listening session last week – Meghan and I really enjoyed our conversations. Thanks so much also to those who have taken the time to complete the survey and had your say in this way. For those who haven’t had an opportunity to do so, I’d encourage you to – you all have the link.

We welcome your views on what matters to you, what we do well and need to do more of and what we need to improve. We also welcome your views on what you’d like our refreshed values to be, which will align to the NHS Scotland values. From the many conversations I have had with you over the last 10-months, the words that have come up most have been – kind, open and inclusive.  As you will see in the survey, we welcome your views on whether these values resonate or whether there are alternatives you would prefer to share for our consideration based on what is most important and means the most to you. You can also send any feedback or thoughts to our new dedicated email address.

Our staff awards remain open to nominations and the deadline is 4 February. As you will remember, we have reintroduced our staff awards – now called the Team Orkney Awards – in response to staff feedback and I am delighted that we were able to do so thanks to support from the Orkney Health Board Endowment Funds (a registered Scottish charity). Please do take the time to nominate a colleague/team – the link to the categories is here: Team Orkney Awards | NHS Orkney (scot.nhs.uk) and you all have the nomination form. 

And finally – please do continue to share your feedback with me about how can further improve how we communicate with you, seek feedback from you to help us to improve and involve you in decision-making so we can continue to strengthen our programme of work to communicate well, listen well and engage well. You can send any ideas or thoughts to me anytime to laura.skaife-knight@nhs.scot or drop me a message via Teams.

Thank you, Team Orkney, for everything you do.

Take care and have a great week.

See you soon.

Laura Skaife-Knight

Chief Executive