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Our Team Orkney Awards are back
We’ve launched our Team Orkney Awards to recognise and celebrate the vital work, commitment and dedication of health and care staff in our community. The awards, now in their second year, will once again recognise and thank individuals and teams who consistently go above and beyond to deliver exceptional care to our patients, keep our services running and work hard to improve our services as a whole. They will also recognise those who consistently live our values of open and honest, respect and kindness. This year’s categories have been updated and refreshed in response to community and staff feedback, as…
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Working together to improve Orkney’s Health and Wellbeing – Community Nursing
This feature on our Community Nursing service is the second of our regular series of patient information updates to put the spotlight on clinical services at NHS Orkney. As an organisation, we want to share with you and be open and transparent about how we are addressing the challenges we face in supporting you. The Community Nursing service in Orkney is under pressure, and we need your assistance to help us meet your needs and to support you to take responsibility for your own health and wellbeing. We start this feature by asking for your support to make the best…
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A year of further progress for Team Orkney – looking back at 2024
Dear Orkney Community As we near the end of 2024, it’s important that we look back on what has been an incredibly busy year, but one we are especially proud of. By working together, our staff have made so many positive improvements for our patients, our community and our colleagues. We have reached a number of important milestones and achievements that are important to recognise and celebrate. Mirroring the wider NHS in Scotland, we have faced significant challenges and pressures on our health and care services in Orkney. Our staff have all responded to these so well, with a relentless focus on continuing to deliver…
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Festive Public Holiday Closures 2024
All GP and Dental surgeries will be closed on the festive Public Holidays – Wednesday 25 and Thursday 26 December 2024 and Wednesday 1 and Thursday 2 January 2025. In an emergency you can contact a GP in the same way as routine evening/weekend cover. If you are ill when your practice is closed and can’t wait until it reopens, or if you require urgent dental care during this time, you should call NHS 24 on 111. For any medical emergencies you should still call 999. Many local surgeries have their own facebook/website pages which you can follow to keep…
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NHS Orkney Winter Messaging
Since early summer, like all other health boards, NHS Orkney has been putting in place relevant plans for the winter season. As you may expect each winter, we see an increase in patients presenting to all our sites across NHS Orkney. As a community we can all work together to keep one another as well as possible: Please continue to take up the offer of this winter’s vaccinations. Those eligible for winter vaccines, whether flu or covid have been contacted and given an appointment. If you are unsure if you are eligible, you can use the NHS Inform eligibility checker…
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Chief Executive Fortnightly Blog to NHS Orkney Staff – 9 December 2024
Message for All NHSO Staff Hi All Happy Monday! I hope you are all well. This week’s fortnightly blog is about all things Christmas. We’re offering all staff a free Christmas lunch at The Balfour restaurant on Tuesday 17 December, as a small way of saying thank you for all you do. To keep things running smoothly, we’re introducing pre-ordering to minimise queues in the restaurant. Plus, we’re offering a team delivery service! The menu can be found on the NHS Orkney Staff Wellbeing Christmas page and preorder details will be released this week. For those of you working in the Mainland…
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NHS Orkney Annual Review – Reconnecting with our community
Yesterday, 3 December 2024, we held our 2024 Annual Review meeting, which presented an opportunity for us to reconnect with our community and share our journey of improvement, our challenges and responses to these and our future plans and ambitions based on what matters to people. We thank those who took the time to come and speak and share their stories of using NHS Orkney services – including following engagement with Age Scotland Orkney, The Blide Trust and Orkney Housing Association. Thank you also to our Clinicians and Union colleagues. The depth and richness of the feedback we have heard…
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NHS Orkney achieves gold award from UNICEF
We have once again been awarded gold accreditation from UNICEF for our Maternity and Health Visiting Services across NHS Orkney. Services who have this accreditation must complete annual audits of parents who use the service and of staff who care for babies and their parents to ensure standards are being maintained. In addition to this, services must have a Guardian such as Meghan McEwen (Board Chair), who champions care for babies and their parents at the most senior level of our organisation. To retain our gold accreditation is testament to both services and the dedication shown by colleagues in these…
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Physiotherapy Musculoskeletal (MSK) Waiting List – Waiting List Validation
Last year NHS Scotland introduced a text message service to ensure our patient waiting lists were up to date and that patients on these lists still required their appointments and operations. We have used this programme for various services across NHS Orkney and are now looking at our Physiotherapy MSK appointment list. From next week, Monday 2 December 2024, patients who are currently on a waiting list for a Physiotherapy MSK appointment will receive a text message from The National Elective Coordination Unit (NECU) from mobile number 07860 039092. These text messages will include a link to a short survey…
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Chief Executive Fortnightly Blog to NHS Orkney Staff – 25 November 2024
Message for All NHSO Staff Hi All I regularly mention the importance of celebrating small wins and our progress as we continue our improvement journey and over this last week there have been a number of these that I want to share with you all so we can pause, celebrate and recognise our progress, recognising these moments are important ones. We know our own iMatter scores improved in many areas in 2024 compared to 2023 signalling that we are moving forward and that the areas we are focusing on in response to your feedback are beginning to make a difference…
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Green Switch Inhaler Project
NHS Orkney’s Primary Care team are encouraging patients to swap to greener, more environmentally friendly inhalers where clinically appropriate inline with the rest of NHS Scotland. It has been identified that the most commonly prescribed inhalers across all GP practices in Orkney are not the most environmentally friendly option. There are other, more greener alternatives which are recommended for control of the same conditions. As an example, swapping your blue Salbutamol inhaler from a CFC-Free version to a Salbutamol Easyhaler, you would save almost 23kg of carbon dioxide per inhaler! In a year this could be as much as 270kg…
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Diabetic Eye Screening Service
**Update 13 December 2024** Please be aware our Diabetic Eye Screening Service has now restarted, with clinics taking place this month. We anticipate we will have seen all patients who were affected by the pause in service by February (2025). We once again want to thank you all for your understanding and apologise for the pause in the service last month. We apologise that we are currently unable to provide the Diabetic Eye Screening service at The Balfour due to unplanned circumstances. We recognise the importance of this service and are working hard to ensure we can re-start this important…