Chief Executive Fortnightly Blog to NHS Orkney Staff - 11 November 2024
Message for All NHSO Staff
Dear all
I start this week’s blog with many positive news stories and progress to share and celebrate with you all.
Firstly, many congratulations to our three members of staff from NHS Orkney who were finalists at this year’s Scotland Health Awards for the outstanding work they do for our patients and community.
Anne Gregg, Macmillan Specialist Nurse and Amanda Manson, Cardiology Specialist Nurse, were both nominated for Nurse of the Year Award and Melissa Lindsay, Midwife and Sonographer, was nominated for Midwife of the Year Award.
A special congratulations to Anne who won the Nurse of the Year Award and Melissa for winning the Midwife of the Year Award. For NHS Orkney to win two of the 16 categories at these prestigious national awards is an amazing achievement. I am so proud of you all.
I am so pleased to see our Long Service certificates and badges being presented to staff and teams by leaders across the organisation. Whilst I know there are some tweaks we need to make to this programme as we look to 2025/26, on the whole I continue to receive really positive feedback from you that long service recognition is back. It matters to you. Last week our Public Health Team were the latest team to celebrate their long-serving colleagues with over 115 years of service in the Public Health Team recognised, which was great to see. Thank you for your dedication and commitment to the NHS and NHS Orkney to those marking long service milestones. It’s long-serving staff who are the DNA and backbone of the NHS, including Team Orkney.
Moving on, myself and our Interim Director of Finance, Brian Steven attended our Quarter two financial review meeting with Scottish Government to update on our progress and to be held to account given we are in escalation for our financial performance. On behalf of you all, we shared our journey of improvement, including that we continue to remain on track to deliver our Financial and Savings plan for the year. Whilst in no way complacent, these are some of the good news stories we shared with Scottish Government – all of which are a result of your hard work and focus and we emphasised that we have an organisation-wide response to the challenge we face and how well you are rising to this challenge. The progress we described, included:
- Overall clinical pay spend has reduced by £1m at Month six compared to last year (£9.5m vs £8.5m)
- Agency spend has reduced by £1.5m at Month six compared to last year (£2.5m vs £1m) - reduction in nurse agency spend to near-zero levels
- 72% of our £4m savings is recurrent i.e., not a one off (something we have never achieved)
- Remote outpatient appointments with NHS Grampian now above 50%
- Length of Stay (LoS) reduced from 5.7 days in Quarter one to 5 days in Quarter two, with reduced number of delayed transfers of care
And finally - two reminders where I ask for a strengthened and renewed focus from everyone please:
- Appraisals
It is clear from our recent Performance Review Meetings that our appraisal rates (circa 30%) do not reflect the amount of work by line managers across the organisation to undertake appraisals with you. It seems in many cases that appraisals have taken place, great conversations have happened which have been written up on Turas – but the final step and the final sign off stage on Turas is not completed, which means our appraisal rates are not up-to-date or accurate. Please can you return to Turas and ensure the final sign off stage has been ‘ticked’ on the system so that we can get an accurate read out of our appraisal rates. For those who are yet to arrange appraisals, please get dates in the diary ASAP for all of your direct line reports. Everyone deserves to have an appraisal. Please ask your manager for an appraisal if you are yet to have one.
- Keeping patient information confidential
Throughout the course of this year, I have been listening to and learning from a patient who we let down when we shared confidential information about them where other people could overhear. The impact of this event on this patient has been profound when it comes to confidence in NHS Orkney and I have committed that we will learn from this. This is not an isolated case and keeping patient information confidential is an area I want us to continually focus on. A few reminders:
- If you need to have a confidential conversation, please do so in an appropriate location
- Please ensure no-one can overhear you when having conversations with patients or if you are sharing information about patients
- If you are having conversations in communal areas, please be mindful of who may be passing by and who may be able to overhear
- When you are away from your computer – please ensure it’s locked (Control-Alt-Delete) - keep patient information confidential.
Thanks for everything you do. Have a great week.
Best wishes.
Laura Skaife-Knight
Chief Executive
