Staff briefing roundup

Welcome – Peter Wightman

General update – Peter Wightman

• System pressures have remained tight – this seems to be a national situation
• We are seeing delays in emergency departments that we haven’t seen in a long time
• Hospitalisation rates have gone down in the last few weeks according to HSJ
• One Health and Care Partnership – draft vision, priorities, outcomes and goals have been created – did he say that he is bring this to board and then will share this with staff in the next few briefings?
• Attended the Essex Health and Wellbeing board last week – discussed the mental health strategy
• We are looking to make an impact across a range of strategic principles aligning the focus of our work with the wider determinants of health and specifically the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s four key themes: healthy behaviours, socioeconomic factors, clinical care and built environment
• Jane Kinniburgh – was on a national call around children and reported there has been a 10% increase in child mortality
• Wendy Bailey – it is important to have early intervention practices to help reduce such mortality rates
• David Wallace – attended the Health Protection Board – the case rate in Essex is on a downward trajectory
• For the whole of Essex – first and second doses of the vaccine are good, but Harlow is still slightly behind
• Generally, the case rates across Essex are going down
• PAH – 17 COVID inpatients as of this morning
• Jane Halpin cover arrangements – Beverly Flowers is leading our executive team and Christine Alan is picking up the outwards work with NHSE and partners. Any questions around these cover arrangements please contact the Comms team

Local update – Vanessa Moon on behalf of Ian Tompkins

• An update on Afghan refugees: we have 122 evacuees at a hotel at Stansted who could be moving to Harlow or other towns, but not clear exactly where or when yet
• Office booking system – Ubook is now up and running and many people have already booked desks and meeting rooms at Spencer Close. It’s easy to use, but if you want to join a quick training session, Alan has arranged two sessions which have been emailed to everyone as diary invites. The first one is this afternoon at 3.30pm
• Alan Hicks – please set your default internet browser to Microsoft Edge or Chrome
• Look out for your email to complete the staff survey. This will be circulated next Monday (27 September). Please do complete this so we can look at where we need to make improvements. We had a great response rate last year so it would be good to improve on that this year.
• Jabs for over 50s has now begun, and jabs for 12-15 year olds are also going to start within schools – this is carried out by the School Immunisation team. There will also be information packs for parents and we will share this information in the staff newsletter this week
• Booster jab – People aged over 50 can now book their top-up COVID (booster) jab on the National Booking System
• Flu jabs for staff are likely to begin from mid to late October and will be delivered at St Margaret’s Hospital by PAH staff. In the meantime, if you are offered a flu jab by your GP, please take this up
• WECCG is holding a celebration event next Thursday 30 September – we will look back over the last year, our achievements and hearing from service users
• Staff Quiz – there have been a few requests to have an October and/or Christmas quiz. It would be good to get an idea of who would like to join, please express your interest to the Comms team