A powerful guest blog

We’ve got a powerful guest blog this week from Clare Parker, our director of nursing, healthcare professionals and quality governance.

Talking about our own personal experience can help reduce stigma and make it OK to talk about mental health issues, so many thanks to Clare for being so open and sharing her story.

Best wishes,
Claire

Claire Molloy, chief executive

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Do we really know the people we work alongside each day? 

Here's me with my grandad

Often we can spend many hours working closely with people, but never really take the time to get to know them or take an interest in what is going on for them, perhaps over a cup of coffee. 

How do we know when people are going through celebrations or challenges in their family and personal life?  And how do we offer support, kindness and compassion at work?

One thing that people might not know about me is that nearly two years ago, my 96 year old grandad took his own life. He had been widowed 18 months previously following the death of my 94 year old nanna, who died of motor neurone disease. 

On the anniversary of his death last March, I posted on twitter to raise awareness of older people’s suicide and, just before Christmas, I made a decision to take part in a Schwartz round, as the theme for the day was ‘suicide awareness’. 

To sit in front of my colleagues and share my story was not an easy decision for me. It is an emotional and personal story, but one which I feel passionately about sharing to keep raising awareness of this challenging topic. 

I don’t mind admitting that I did become tearful as I shared  how I had always looked up to my grandparents, how they had given me so many fantastic memories and how one of the lessons they gave me was to “make the most of life and the experiences it can bring”. 

They were strong advocates of making memories, rather than collecting things, and they themselves travelled the world and certainly enjoyed and lived a full and rewarding life together. 

The impact of my grandad’s suicide has been very different for each and every member of my family, but for me it has been important to reflect on, recognise and celebrate the lives of my grandparents.

In my day to day role in our Trust, suicide is something I have to read about, talk about and think about on a weekly basis.  It is so important to think about the families, our staff and wider teams and communities who are affected by each and every suicide. And to remember it is something we should talk about and consider how it impacts our colleagues, so we can offer support and compassion, and even a shoulder to cry on, at times. 

Alongside me on the panel were two amazing and inspiring colleagues, who also shared their personal and emotional stories. It reminded me that it is the people around us - our family and friends, but also our work family - who contribute to how we behave, think and feel. 

Experiences we have both in and out of work contribute to our own health and wellbeing and the people we work alongside contribute to that enormously. 

A reminder that we all need to make sure we look after ourselves, as well as other people around us.  So try to make time to have that cup of coffee with a colleague.

Best wishes,
Clare Parker

My visit to the children's community nurses in Heywood, Middleton and Rochdale

I recently went to visit the Heywood, Middleton and Rochdale (HMR) children’s community nurses based at Callaghan House in Heywood.

For background, the nurses are part of our HMR Children’s Acute and Ongoing Needs Service, which was launched in September last year to bring together a range of community services for children and young people and make them accessible through a single point of access (SPOA).

During my visit, I was keen to see how the team was finding the new service arrangement. I was pleased to hear that the bringing together of the children’s specialisms in the borough is working well and seems to have improved access to support through the one telephone number.

I also wanted to find out about the team’s experience of mobile working. The children’s community nurses were one of our pilot teams for adopting mobile working and PARIS – our electronic patient record – and it’s proved very successful. Lisa Hufton, the service lead for the Children’s Acute and Ongoing Needs Service, is a real advocate of the system and of the new mobile devices the team are using to allow them to update electronic records while they are out on visits.

We have to acknowledge that the implementation of PARIS across the Trust so far has not been without its challenges so it’s positive to hear from a team who have adopted it successfully and are seeing real results. We’re at a stage where around 25% of the Trust is using PARIS and further support is needed to continue the roll out to the remaining 75%. 

We’ve invited Lisa to attend an upcoming session with the Board to demonstrate how PARIS and mobile working has worked for her team, share some of the obstacles they faced, and join the discussions about the investment needed to complete the roll out.

Another highlight of the visit was learning of the partnership work the nurses are doing with Greater Manchester Fire and Rescue Service (GMFRS). It involves the staff referring families to GMFRS if they may benefit from health and wellbeing checks which include fire safety advice and accident prevention. The partnership works both ways, with GMFRS contacting Pennine Care if they come across any families who may benefit from health support. I know this is happening in other service areas but I’m keen to see if happening consistently across the Trust so have put Lisa in touch with our Fire Safety Manager to share this best practice.

I just want to thank Lisa and her team for giving up their time to meet with me and for sharing their experiences.  

The exec team will be conducting more visits around the trust on a regular basis and will share updates with staff via the blog.

Thank you
Martin

Martin Roe, Chief Executive (Acting)

An eye opening visit to Bury

There are many good reasons to go to Bury - the World Famous Bury Market  or the East Lancashire Steam Railway or the very beautiful Burrs Country Park... but last week I went to Bury for a very good reason, to visit the Bury Community Stroke Team. 

I mention Bury’s well-known tourist attractions such as the World Famous Market because people travel far and wide to visit. Yet when we mention examples of healthcare worth travelling to see, Sweden or USA are often mentioned, but not Bury.

Well, I spent an inspirational afternoon with the Bury Community Stroke Team, managed by Lisa and led by Jo, and it was well worth the short journey up the M66.  As much as I’d welcome a visit to Jönköping or Boston, the Bury Community Stroke Team show we can reach for world class care here in the UK!

The service is a great example of where commissioners and providers have come together to do the right thing for patients - improve care pathways and empower people to manage their own healthcare needs.

Whenever I read about healthcare, plan strategy or visit services, I look for a number of things - a well-led service, clear operational plans and specifications, the promotion of self-care, whole person care and the holy grail of good physical and mental health care combined. 

If I had been playing community stroke service Bingo (that well known pastime!) I would have been shouting ‘house’ after thirty minutes of Jo and her team describing their service: 

• Did they measure outcomes that could be part of an overall indicator of performance to demonstrate value? Tick - they use EQ5D5L, something I hadn’t known about but understand other community services uses also.  Excellent.

• Do they promote self-care? Tick - they are running a self-care course and are also developing modules to be run through the Trust's Living Well Academy. 

• Technology? Tick – they use Healthtalkonline and Speech and Language Therapists use apps to help people following a stroke.

• What about the psychological aspects of the community care pathway for stroke? Tick - The team has worked with the Bury psychological therapies team to develop the psychological offer in the overall care pathway. They are now trained in Brief Solution Focused Therapy and Motivational Interviewing and speak positively about whole person care. 

As I said I was inspired and it was a perfect example of how Trusts like Pennine Care are well placed to provide whole person care to our patients. 

I can’t do justice to how impressive this team really is. It’s early days and they are still building the data to measure overall performance, but all the core ingredients are there to deliver a world class service. The team should be rightly proud of themselves and commissioners congratulated for attending to the out of hospital care needs on the stroke pathway.

District nursing visit 

A few days later and I was back in Bury.  I know there are great quality bargains to be grabbed on the market but I didn’t have time to stop unfortunately, as I was visiting one of the district nursing teams for work. Although I’m not sure having the privilege to spend time with dedicated, skilled, professional nurses can really be described as work. 

I spent the morning with Sian, Vicky, Karen and Jo talking about the challenges faced in district nursing services.  I was fortunate to shadow Karen carrying out her clinical duties and talking to her reminded me how complex and demanding the district nursing role is.

In my last blog, I talked about polarities and managing change and within Pennine Care we have recently carried out a district nursing review, involving nurses from all of our boroughs. 

We and system leaders up and down England mustn’t forget that district nurses are busy, skilled professionals who carry out complex, difficult and demanding work. 

As hospitals try to move care outside of hospital and GPs look for support to high levels of demands, where does the care go?  Into community services and often to the district nurse. They can rarely say no to demands, go about their hard work effectively (but often quietly) and make a huge difference to the lives of people who need their care.

The community models of care, especially district nursing, need dedicated thought leadership, investment of time and resources to develop models and an understanding that a district nursing team has the same floors and ceilings of capacity as a ward does. 

We talk about hard truths for ward staffing levels, which I fully agree with, but it isn’t just wards that have to be safely and effectively staffed, so does the community.

It was a real pleasure to spend time with such a hard working team, not short on ideas on what they feel needs to be done. But I think the NHS system needs to listen more to their voice and not overlook the community filling in the sandwich between primary care and hospitals.