Public Board papers 31.03.22

Palatine Ward Ward Managers professional judgment (achievements & challenges) Achievements/Challenges – • Matrons’ quality rounds continue- excellent way to highlight issues and gain live patient feedback • Palatine Ward consistently has low numbers of outstanding incidents with robust processes in place. • In December we were fully recruited and had over recruited for the future, making sure we had people waiting to start when other staff were due to leave. This approach is really helpful to minimise disruption to the service. • Recruitment continues to be a challenge as the number of newly qualified staff nurses is increasing. During this time, we only had 1.72 WTE CPFs, but this has been addressed with successful employment of more CPFs. • Having so many junior nurses make succession planning difficult. • It can be challenging to allow Band 6s management time, which effects their ability to learn new management skills and keep up to date with their team. Although we have managed an in-house band 6 study day for new band 6s, consolidating that learning has been difficult due to staffing issues. • Management administrative tasks are not considered in daily staff meetings, and with such a large team it is important that this is factored in so 1:1s can continue to ensure everyone’s health and wellbeing is supported effectively. I feel very fortunate to manage the Palatine Ward. I feel that we are able to offer the team a training package to become highly skilled practitioners and offer them various learning opportunities to consolidate and specialise in their chosen field. This in turn ensures our patients receive high quality safe care. During July-Dec there has been a difficult time with staffing, due to coronavirus and new starters, but this was considered in our service plan, with the transplant programme reduced to essential cases only and beds closed to maintain safety. Staff continue to help with the unpredictability of sickness, due to covid, by swapping at short notice and picking up bank shifts to help support the service. We are also working closely with ambulatory care/Withington ward and HTDU to try and manage these shortfalls in staffing. We continue to maintain high standards of cleaning, which is demonstrated through our ‘flo’ audits, which is a credit to our housekeeping and HCA team. Palatine ward has also been recognised in the Student placement of the year ‘Recognising Excellence and Achievement Awards 2020/21’, which was our first time to be nominated in this category. This was an amazing achievement during these challenging times. This also reflects our success in recruiting our student nurses when they qualify.

Oncology Critical Care Unit (OCCU) Ward Managers professional judgment (achievements & challenges)

The increased nursing establishment has certainly been welcomed and we have recruited some excellent band 5 nurses. Their success has been the result of good mentorship and as always, a supportive OCCU team. We have continued to have some really challenging shifts on occasions; we have stepped out of recommended nurse to patient ratio. Our acuity and

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