Listen to our NTH Voices podcasts.
Each episode brings an insightful conversation with North Tees and Hartlepool NHS Foundation Trust staff about careers in the NHS, the wellbeing of our staff and the future of healthcare.
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Episode 20 – Get involved, become a governor
Want to stand for our upcoming governor elections?
In the latest episode of NTH Voices, group chair Professor Derek Bell discusses what our governors do, why the role is so important and how members of our community can get involved.
Find out more about becoming a governor for our Trust.
Episode 20 – Get involved, become a governor
Intro: Welcome to North Tees and Hartlepool Voices, telling the stories of our people and community in our Trust.
Elliot: My name’s Elliot Kennedy and with the studio today we have Derek Bell.
Derek: First of all, I welcome the opportunity to speak on Radio Stitch today so thanks very much for that opportunity.
Elliot: Our Trust is appealing for people to stand as governors. What does a governor do?
Derek: What the governors do is support the Trust to deliver the high quality care that’s needed for our patients and population. And they do that by monitoring the senior leadership team and people like myself and also they have oversight of a number of important annual functions, like the annual report which tells people what the organisation’s doing over the year.
It’s a really important role that they’ve got.
Elliot: So why should our listeners consider standing as an elective governor?
Derek: To be an effective governor what we need is the governor to be representative of the population that we serve and our staff groups and then what they can act on is the voice of that group for us as well. It means we get important information, if you like, from the horse’s mouth.
Elliot: And what makes a really good governor?
Derek: What makes a really good governor is actually, first of all it is a voluntary post and therefore they do need time. Obviously we support them as best we can with infrastructure and take some tasks away from them but they do need time.
But importantly what we really want them to do is be really interested in the services that we provide and the population that we serve. But by being representative of the population, they can come and give us that advice.
Elliot: And I understand time’s running out now. When is the deadline?
Derek: Well I suppose the important thing is we need you now is the message and the deadline is next Tuesday.
But we’re really keen to get members to become a governor. And that’s an important point – to become a governor, you need to be a member of the trust but becoming a member of the Trust is an easy application process for both for the public and for staff.
Elliot: And how do people find out more information on this?
Derek: Well, importantly, there’s information on the Trust website. So if you search on the Trust website under ‘governors’, that information should be there. And also you can call 01642 383 563.
And we look forward to people trying to apply as quickly as possible.
Elliot: And, once again, the deadline is next Tuesday the 23rd is it?
Derek: Next Tuesday the 23rd.
Elliot: Right, well thank you Derek.
Derek: Thanks very much.
Outro: Thank you for joining us. Until next time. You’ve been listening to NTH Voices.
Episode 19 – Tees Community Dental
In the latest episode of NTH Voices, Elliot Kennedy meets our Tees Community Dental oral health promotion team.
They discuss our region’s position in regards to oral health, how they support local children and care home residents and what we can all be doing to keep our mouths healthy.
Episode 19 – Tees Community Dental
Intro: Welcome to North Tees and Hartlepool Voices, telling the stories of our people and community in our Trust.
Elliot: My name is Elliot Kennedy and with me in the studio today we have Roy and Marie from the oral health promotions department. Hello.
Roy: Hi, Elliot, how you doing?
Elliot: Right who are you?
Roy: It’s a long answer to that, Elliot. We come under the umbrella of the Tees Community Dental Service. We’ve got a clinical team working in the community around the Tees area and administration group based in Guisborough and our screening team of Hannah based with us in the oral health promotion department at Helmsley house here at North Tees Hospital.
Hannah organises the schools and the dental teams as we conduct our screening surveys of 5-year-old children. The results from this survey, which is almost complete for this round which is brilliant, feeds into a national survey giving us both a national and local picture of the dental health of our children. This gives us direction and helps in the commissioning of dental health priorities for Teesside.
The OHPD itself is a small six-person team but we all come with a clinical background, mainly in dentistry. Marie. our line manager. Lindsay. Sue. Becky and myself have loads of experience of working in dental surgeries and our colleague Karen, who’s our glue and holds us all together, joined us from Cipher ambulance and worked alongside the paramedics.
Elliot: And what areas do you cover?
Roy: The four main Tees regions – Hartlepool, North Tees, Middlesbrough and Redcar and Cleveland. Roughly each of us works an area but we help each other where we can and often support each other at health awareness events.
Elliot: And how is your work planned?
Roy: We have a consultant in dental public health. Kamini Shah oversees us and she and Marie meet annually to determine our priorities, set us our goals and make sure everything falls in line with the commissioning team’s requirements.
Elliot: What is the OHPD’s priorities and what do you actually do?
Roy: It’s a nice simple question, it’s got a big long answer. Marie, do you want to start us off on this?
Marie: I can do. Basically we work right across the board, children and residential care homes take our priorities. We have about 200 settings on our book and the overwhelming majority of these are child care centres, nurseries and primary schools.
Our number one priority is to keep children out of hospital, trying to prevent tooth decay. Tooth decay is preventable and is caused by a poor, often sugary diet and generally little are poor toothbrushing. You can’t hide from it, access to a dentist in the UK is difficult at the moment which obviously doesn’t help the situation. However, prevention is better.
Roy: We go to the vast majority of schools and nurseries in this area. We deliver a toothbrushing program to about 177,000 children, getting them into the habit of good daily brushing. Most importantly, because there’s so few of us, we train people, we train the teachers to deliver this programme safely, cleanly and efficiently. We’re funded by the local authorities to supply toothbrushes, fluoride toothpaste and storage racks.
And, Elliot, I think this is important, parents can rest assured that this programme is delivered to the highest level of cleanliness possible. To achieve that, we go out to each setting and make sure that the pre-schools and the schools are delivering this programme safely by observing. We go and watch the whole process from start to finish in all of the groups that take part. We also advise teachers on what is a healthy diet and what is not, giving them advice that underpins the programme and that they can use to pass on to parents and especially those parents and children living in our most vulnerable areas.
Marie: Our other priority is residents in our care homes. The emphasis here is to make sure that we encourage care staff to look after the oral health of our elderly or infirmed loved ones by providing them with the training and knowledge, and hopefully the confidence and motivation, to care for the people to the highest possible standard.
We also provide training to our 0-19 19 services, including our health and social care colleagues.
Roy: And if that’s not enough, we also work with our colleagues here in North Tees Hospital, for example Ward 28, again training people to give them an understanding of how to help their patients achieve a higher standard of oral health and reduce the risk factors that can delay their recovery.
We work collaboratively with other departments, for example the Melissa bus where I think you and I bumped into each other, and are often asked to deliver training to outside agencies. For example the START team as well as frequently supporting health awareness events. We reported an inaugural STEM at Middlesbrough College event and carried out our own supportive presentations both here in North Tees hospital and at Hartlepool hospital.
For example, the National Smile Month and that’s due up again – quick plug – 23 May here at North Tees Hospital when that will begin. We also attend the community forum which often leads to collaborative discussions and, I think Marie would agree, that for a small department we don’t half get round.
Elliot: Is the OHPD successful in this way?
Marie: Well, we have statistics to prove that for the first time ever, the North Tees region fell below the national average for tooth decay. Hartlepool, which is blessed with having fluoride naturally its water supply, has always been below the national average.
Sadly, the overall levels in the Tees region is far too high. And this is attributed to a poor diet which is high in sugar and often poor toothbrushing. There are still too many children being admitted to North Tees hospital to have teeth removed, and often multiple teeth removed, under the general anaesthetic.
As a department we still have lots of work to do but as a population we have to truly realise the impact sugar and poor toothbrushing has on our children and we have to act on that.
Elliot: You can’t keep dentistry out of the news can you?
Roy: No, you can’t. Sadly it’s never in the news for good reasons. The quality of dentistry in the UK is wonderful, unfortunately access to dentists locally and nationally is really difficult.
This makes it even more important that we get our message over. Eat healthy, keeping sugary snacks to meal times when they have a reduced impact on the health of the mouth, brush your teeth twice a day and certainly last thing at night with a toothpaste that has a minimum of 1,350 parts per million of fluoride which covers most adult conventional toothpastes. And don’t rinse out afterwards, just spit excess toothpaste out.
And, of course, see your dentist every six months unless they specifically advise otherwise. If you want to snack during the day, please, please, please choose something healthy like fruit or at least savoury. While dentistry is going through a tough time, we all have a part to play in keeping ourselves as healthy as possible.
Elliot: What’s the best bit of your job?
Roy: For me personally, I love watching the youngest children when we go around to the schools and we’re watching the children brushing their teeth and we see the youngest children discovering toothbrushing and going to a setting and seeing children develop this brushing – learning a skill that they can use every day at home and for the rest of the lives, and a skill that’s going to enhance their oral health as well as their overall health.
Elliot: Why did you say that brushing their teeth will improve the overall health?
Marie: The plaque bacteria that comes with poor oral health has long been associated, increasing the risk of other systemic diseases within the body. For example, oral cancer, heart health, diabetes Alzheimer’s, strokes to name but a few.
Elliot: What’s the worst bit of your job?
Roy: Worst bit of my job is also the bit that drives me. Up to the end of the financial year, 22-23, our clinical team carried out tooth extractions and, as Marie said, often multiple extractions to over 300 children here at North Tees hospital. 300 children. We should all be saddened by these figures but we should all be determined to drive these figures down and the only way we can do this is by driving the good oral health message forward.
Elliot: So what are the messages to people?
Roy: The message is a simple one and it’s an old one. Eat healthily. Sugar causes tooth decay. Eat sugar at main meal times only and eat a healthy snack between meals. Everyone brush your teeth at least twice a day and absolutely last thing at night using a fluoride toothpaste that has at least 1,350 parts per million. We prefer you to spit out any excess toothpaste rather than swallow it and don’t rinse out afterwards, leave the toothpaste in contact with the teeth as long as you can.
Help and supervise your children brush their teeth up to the age of seven. See your dentist every six months, unless they specifically tell you otherwise. Let’s try and get in regularly so that we deal with small problems rather than the big ones.
Marie: Every single one of us has a part to play. Look at yourselves first and make simple adjustments that will improve your dental health and your overall health.
For example, reduce or stop putting sugar in your teas and coffees, if you’re a parent make sure your children are brushing their teeth twice a day even from when their first tooth comes through using an adult toothpaste, and keep sugar to meal times. If you’re a grandparent, don’t offer your grandchildren a sweet treat between meals, try to keep that to meal times only. Offer them something different instead, maybe it’s a piece of fruit.
Dental decay, and the sadness and trauma that surrounds it, is preventable. So we can all do a little bit more ourselves.
Elliot: Roy, Marie, thank you.
Outro: Thank you for joining us. Until next time. You’ve been listening to NTH Voices.
Episode 18 – Exploring our NHS subsidiary, NTH Solutions
The latest episode of NTH Voices explores NTH Solutions – our subsidiary company for estates, facilities and support services within our Trust. They also support external organisations.
We get to know managing director Mike Worden a little better, discuss the company’s achievements to date and discuss what’s next for NTH Solutions.
Episode 18 – Exploring our NHS subsidiary, NTH Solutions
Intro: Welcome to North Tees and Hartlepool Voices, telling the stories of our people and community in our Trust.
Andy: Hi, I’m Andy tingle and today I’d just like to welcome the MD of NTH Solutions Mike Worden into the studios once again. Welcome Mike.
Mike: Good morning Andrew, nice to be here.
Andy: Yes, it’s always a pleasure to have you here in the studio, especially because you’re so busy and so hard to get old of as well.
So I brought you in just to ask you a few questions about NTH and about yourself. Can you tell me a little bit about your background and obviously have you always worked for the NHS?
Mike: Yeah, a good start. So I don’t traditionally have a normal NHS background. I would say personally, I mean technically actually I started in the fish and chip business as most people do right way back when obviously as a kid but I used to love it. And by the way my friends used to love it on a Friday night because they were best fish and chips ever. One portion would cover four people, they loved it.
But anyway on a serious note, it isn’t a traditional background. I worked in private equity in London in healthcare related businesses. But in essence, private equity companies that I work for would parachute me in to then turn them around operationally to make them a viable business. And then we’d then look to move them on. So down in London kind of the Monday to Thursday thing for, oh God, more years than I really want to count.
And then in 2016, yeah I’ll just check, my daughter was actually born. Yeah, 2016 when my daughter was born I wanted to come back North. I was tired of the commute and living out of hotels a bit so I moved back North. And obviously private equity brings a degree of financial stability with it which gives you a few options so I wanted to do something with genuine purpose, to add real value somewhere and then by the luck, I ended up here and here I’ve been since for the last kind of nearly five years now.
Andy: Fantastic. So what is NTH Solutions? What do they do really in the Trust? And tell me a little bit about your role within the company.
Mike: Sure so NTH Solutions is a subsidiary of the Trust but, you know, in essence what does that mean? Well it’s a fundamental part of the Trust. We deliver all the non-clinical services that the Trust needs to be able to kind of function properly, as well as with the commercial revenue side of the Trust as well. So not only do we try and deliver all the great services that all the clinical sites need to be able to deliver their services effectively, but we actually try and bring money in so that we can actually increase the funds at the financial position of the Trust so that we’ve got more money to do more good things for patients with. That’s fundamentally what we do.
It’s a bit of an analogy really but I like to think of it as we’re the kind of like blood of the Trust. Kind of in a biology way, you know, you got the heart, the lungs and all the good stuff that, in essence in the analogy, the clinical teams would be. They go out there and do all the essential functions that we’ve got to do but none of those kind of organs would be able to function properly without a good blood supply.
Andy: Yes.
Mike: And in essence, all the things that sit in the non-clinical services are the equivalent of that blood supply. We keep it working, we keep it functioning and I like to think that none of us could do our job without each other. But that’s the kind of essential nature of NTH Solutions, but in essence it’s the non-clinical services of the Trust.
Andy: So a little bit about your role?
Mike: So I’m the managing director, not the medical director, as someone said when you call yourself MD of that company. And technically, I guess I’m the ultimate responsible person for the kind of the operational delivery, the financial management, the strategic direction of the company, as such, reporting to the board on that.
So, from a technical point of view that would be my role. But the way I view it, and I’m a simple man so I do like to keep things simple, but I think my role is to create an environment where our people have the opportunity to be the best that they can be. Now, what do I mean by that? You know, it’s kind of a big thing to say but I genuinely believe that my role is to make sure people feel valued that they’re recognised and they’re supported to be the best version of themselves because if someone’s the best version of themselves, the things that we do will be of the best quality. It will feel good to be part of and to be part of it and to receive those services. And, in essence in a non-technical way, that’s how I kind of see my job. I’m here to help our people.
Sorry I just want to add to that though – are we there yet? I mean it would be remiss to think and try and articulate that, you know, I don’t think you ever really get there, by the way, it’s kind of a continual thing. But we’ve got a long way to go but at least if we’re on that journey to create that type of place to be, I think that’s a good place to start.
Andy: What motivates you to get out of bed on the morning and come to work?
Mike: Yeah, well I mean, it’s going to sound a bit cheesy and people roll their eyes I would imagine, but do you know what? First, it doesn’t feel like work. So in my other careers and jobs that I’ve held, even though they’ve been really rewarding and very good in many ways and give me some invaluable experience, they felt like work. And I remember someone telling me that, you know, that famous saying that you know if you do something you love then you’ll never work a day in your life or words to that effect. But I genuinely have experienced that here. It, for me, doesn’t feel like work.
I genuinely have fallen in love with the people of this area and the people in this organisation, they’re very real, very honest and great people and that brings me to work. People work for people I think and, you know, I work for the people here and I really enjoy it. I mean, don’t get me wrong, some days are a chew aren’t they?
Andy: Yeah.
Mike: I’m talking on averages here, you just can’t escape that fact. But, I mean generally, I’m like ‘great, it’s Monday, let’s come to work’, you know. I really enjoy my job and I feel very blessed and lucky to work with the people that I do work with so I guess that’s why I come to work.
Andy: The last time you were in the studios we touched on something called a letter to myself and this was so inspiring, and I know you’re a team player and things like that. I even took it home and I played it to my 15-year-old son and even his eyes welled up as much as mine did on that day.
How do you motivate and inspire your team to deliver those best interests for the Trust?
Mike: Well I mean, first off, thank you for that. Very kind words. It was a good thing, I enjoyed doing that letter to myself. It was part of my test to make myself vulnerable and to put myself out there. I think actually by doing that, it actually gives you some strength and courage. So thank you for that, Andy.
I mean they’re big words aren’t they? ‘Motivate and inspire people’. I just come to work and I am who I am. If I may, can I rephrase that?
Andy: Yeah, of course you can.
Mike: Call it imposter syndrome or whatever you want but I’d kind of prefer to rephrase that as ‘how do I feel people are motivated and inspired?’ And again, I come back to a point I touched on earlier which is I think it’s important to create an environment that people want to be part of and are proud to be part of it and that they have some purpose within it.
There’s a kind of like a strategy, if you like, that I like to think of when I think about these things and it works on the basis of I think if you can give people accountability, the accountability that they get and, of course, you’ve got to hold them accountable. But that accountability makes people feel like they’ve got a contribution, they can contribute to something. If they contribute to something, then they’ve got relevance. If someone feels like they’re relevant, then they’ve got purpose.
Andy: Yeah.
Mike: Purpose usually helps people perform well so their performance is good and then performance gives people belief. And I think, I would argue until the cows come home, that if you work in an organisation where the majority – and obviously this is kind of the majority game in this. If the majority of people have belief in themselves, that’s a great organisation to be part of.
That inspires people, it motivates themselves, it’s self-generating.
So again, I come back to where I started that, you know, no one person can do any of that but if you can create an environment and then that self builds itself by allowing people to work for people and to feel part of it, then I think that’ll motivate and inspire people ultimately. You know, I just come to work and I am who I am.
Andy: You do your job.
Mike: I do my job.
Andy: And being a good leader obviously takes a lot of work. What are your strengths and weaknesses?
Mike: Well if you ask my wife, she’ll have a different view to this. But my strength and weaknesses. I don’t think it’s really for me to say what my strengths are, that’s probably for other people to say that and I’ll come to what I know I need to work on more in a moment. My strengths as such, well as I just mentioned I come to work and I am who I am.
One of the things that I’ve learned over time, and I actually mentioned it in that letter to myself, one of the things that I’ve tried and learned is that I try and act myself and I know that my inherent values are good. I would say, you know, I try and do the right thing and try and help people. You can’t always do that every single time but inherently I try and do the best that I can do in a situation. So I’d say that my values are okay, they’re good values I would say.
And inevitably just by having the responsibility I do, some people are going to like that, some people are not. You know, some people have good days, bad days and, you know, you’ll annoy some people, you’ll help other people, etc. etc. But because I think that my values are about right, that gives a degree of authenticity I think to the way that I behave and then by not having to be liked if you like.
As I put in that letter to myself, I’m very careful with who I give that power to and it is a power if you let your own feelings be controlled by how other people judge you. That can be a really difficult position to be in and can be very unhappy position. So I think if you’ve got inherently good values and you behave in a way that reflect those and you don’t have to be liked by everyone and their dog, then that can give you a position of being a good leader I think, in many ways.
Now, no one’s ever perfect on these things and it’s always work in progress but again on a lot of averages, if you can work on that basis then I think you’re probably doing well in terms of like stuff I need to work on and ‘God do I know this’. And I keep kicking myself every time by the way so if someone ever learns how to actually learn these things and not keep repeating them, please do tell me but I definitely need to listen more, you know. And I think most people would agree with that. I think I’m like a goldfish. If I don’t speak it, then I forget it so actually Deepak gave me some great advice about writing questions down so that I don’t have to interrupt everyone every two seconds. I try but I know it’s something I need to do more of.
I’m also a doer, so I like to fix things and get things done and sometimes people just want an ear to listen or to talk to, they don’t want someone to fix the thing that they’re talking about. I’m very aware of that and my default one is to try and help and fix and I need to be mindful of that.
The other bit I think is that I am passionate and I do care and I’m the worst person in the world at poker, I’ve got the terrible poker face. If I’m annoyed, happy, sad or whatever it would be, it’s written all over my face. So I need to detach a little bit more in situations where I’ve been triggered or whatever and not react as much as I do. Literally, I laugh at myself when I do it because I know I shouldn’t do it, that I’ve done it and I’m like ‘oh God’ and I spend half my time unpicking it and I wish I could do more of that.
So there’s definitely some things that I need to work on, but I’ll leave the strengths for others to say.
Andy: And that’s the same for us all I believe.
Mike: Yeah, maybe.
Andy: And you’re saying that obviously you’ve got a passion. What are you most proud of during your time at NTH Solutions?
Mike: Probably two things really. One is a specific example and another is a more generic thing. But I think I’m most proud of where NTH Solutions has come from and what it is now. We really have an opportunity – had an opportunity and still have the opportunity – to create something very special that people can feel part of.
And when I first joined, it was an organisation that had just been set up and was working perfectly fine but it didn’t feel like there was any identity or feeling of belonging they were searching for actually in this new entity that’s being created. Who are we, what are we and now when I look back over that time and see how people have grown into leadership roles and the great services that they delivered then but now we also deliver now and I think we’ve enhanced.
And also the commercial side of the business and the things that we’ve managed to bring into the Trust from an outwards perspective. I’m really proud of that. I’ve seen some great people grow and do great things and I’m really proud of that.
Andy: I see the branding all over the place, especially throughout the Trust and things like that, throughout the hospitals. And it has, it’s jumped leaps and bounds.
Mike: It’s really important to have an identity, be part of something.
Andy: And I believe obviously you and your team have done that over the past few years because of the awareness that you’ve give it throughout the hospitals, even on t-shirts and stuff like that with the staff that are going around, that you’re supplying to the hospitals and making sure that they’re working properly.
Mike: The other bit that I think I’m proud of, from an example side, would be how the business or how the people reacted to COVID-19. To be part of that was, although obviously and clearly a very difficult time, I was very proud without being any way condescending of the team, the staff, how they reacted. People stepping up and the way we worked with our Trust colleagues, it was literally one team, one dream, you know.
You had the likes of Med Engine and Keith and Phil at the time talking about all the different ventilators and how they’re going to work and the consultants were avidly listening and buying in. And then we had, you know, people like Stuart that was talking about the oxygen supply and you know pipe diameters and we really were ahead of the game and it was literally in total synergy with our clinical colleagues who obviously had the tough job to do.
But again by working as a team and everyone doing their piece of the pie and really pulling on that experience, and we’ve got so much wealth of experience in the business, some real experts in there – people that it would be easy to not know. But they make it work and that really was at the forefront of it.
And if I think about, you know, some of the normal headlines part from the oxygen one, you know it was PPE shortages. Well, you know, the procurement team and everyone in NTH Solutions and in the Trust that helped make sure our clinicians never run out of PPE. I mean, we were on the front foot the entire time and that was not by luck. That was exceptional graft and pulling in favours, but just absolutely doing whatever was needed to make sure that the frontline guys had everything they needed to be safe. And, you know, it got close sometimes but no one particularly knew about that, but it was tight at times but we pulled it out the bag.
And honestly I was so incredibly proud. I think I’ll probably take that to my grave, it was a wonderful experience. Apart from, I don’t want to kind of take away from obviously the very difficult nature and the losses that people encountered but it was good to be part of this team during that and to be part of the Trust, I’ve got to say.
Andy: To see you come through the other end is always the best part of it, isn’t it really? And you’ve learned lessons as well, for if anything happens in the future you know that it’s right, you can put systems in place and they’re already there.
What’s on the horizon for NTH Solutions? And tell me about any exciting opportunities that are going on.
Mike: Solutions is always exciting.
I mean, for me, I think the group opportunities with our colleagues at South Tees – that presents some real opportunities I think. I mean obviously everything’s got to work out but the potential for both our organisations to come together to then contribute to the ICB, to the North East, to the wider geography. I think by working better together, we’ve got much more opportunity and ability to do things better and at scale. So I don’t exactly know, of course, what that will be or what it is at this stage but I think the potential opportunity is one that we should all be excited about and ready to take advantage, if that’s the right word, or maximize when they do present themselves. And I am genuinely looking forward to those conversations at the right time.
We’ve got some wonderful work that’s been going on. Steve Bell and Tash that have been working on the stereowave so, in essence, this is way of processing our own waste. It, in essence, gets clinical waste, it microwaves it for lack of a better summary and then turns it into a usable product that we can then resel l, and that’s going on. We’ll be the first in the UK to do that. It’s been a long journey to get it and, again the team have been fleet of foot in purchasing the equipment out of another business that was in administration. And we’ve turned that to a real advantage and we’re going to drive income into it as well as obviously benefitting the sustainability agenda as well.
Thinking about some of the external commercial services we do. So the NHS implant analysis service that we’ve set up – got a global conference that we’re launching in I think November in in Newcastle where we’ve got 10 speakers from all around the world where, in essence, we support the analysis of an implant that’s been removed from a patient and then do a whole kind of analytical procedure on that, feed that back then to the clinical teams and to the manufacturers to make sure that in time, lessons are learned and patient safety and patient care is improved.
We’ve got the Everybody Feels Like Somebody Awards – our second year of running those. So we had our first one last year where we celebrate the excellent work all our staff do and we have drink or two as well to celebrate that, which is always a pleasure. So we’ve got that coming up I think it’s in late November time.
Then, actually I think some people will be aware of it, we managed to partner up with Hardwick Hall Hotel, the Ramside Group and actually got some heavily, heavily discounted tickets for Hardwick Live and that’s coming up soon in August time. And we’ve got like a year that we can all kind of congregate around and people have had access to tickets and various bit and I’m looking forward to seeing people in a relaxed social environment and seeing that too.
So lots, and that’s many different things, Andy, but I think it’s really exciting stuff that’s coming on the horizon for us.
Andy: Yeah, I mean listening to you there, there was a lot of things that I didn’t even realise that NTH Solutions ever did, you know. We just see the staff walking around the place, we see people with hammers and screwdrivers and fixing things and we see the buildings and what’s going on with new theatres getting built and all that sort of stuff which is absolutely amazing.
Mike: And essential.
Andy: It is, it’s exactly what you’ve just said there. And like you said, without NTH Solutions, the building wouldn’t be standing. You are the blood that pumps around the place and keeps it going.
We’re going to finish off with just a little bit of humour. If there was going to be a movie written about yourself, who would play your character?
Mike: Okay, good one. Well I don’t know who would play my character but as a bit of a reference, she’s going to kill me for this one, someone that I worked with said that I looked like a love child between the Rock and Jason Statham. Now I’m not commenting, but they said if those two had a kid it’d look something like me. So anyway, maybe a genetic alteration of those two, something like that.
Andy: We’ll watch out for Netflix and see what comes up. Well, Mike, it’s been a total pleasure as always having you.
Mike: Who would play you?
Andy: Who would play me? Probably Homer Simpson.
As I said, it’s been always a great pleasure to have you in the studio, Mike, and thank you and your team for what you do for the hospital and for the Trust, and I hope to have you back in here in a couple of months’ time and maybe we could reflect on something and see where we are with the new exciting things that are going on within the Trust.
Mike: Love to, it’s an absolute pleasure, and thank you for all the great work that Radio Stitch does as well, it’s wonderful.
Andy: A pleasure, Mike, thank you.
Mike: Cheers.
Outro: Thank you for joining us. Until next time. You’ve been listening to NTH Voices.
Episode 17 – Meet our LGBTQ+ staff network lead
In this episode of NTH Voices, we chat with Matthew Harper – clinical coder and lead for our LGBTQ+ staff network.
Matt talks through the importance of sharing experiences in the workplace, a little of his story as a trans man and how our LGBTQ+ staff network can support.
Episode 17 – Meet our LGBTQ+ staff network lead
Intro: Welcome to North Tees and Hartlepool Voices, telling the stories of our people and community in our Trust.
Host: With me in the studio today I have Matt Harper who is the lead for LGBTQ+ within the Trust.
Matt: Thanks for having me.
Host: Why is visibility important?
Matt: I think because how we view ourselves and our place in the world is so largely shaped by what we see, what we hear, our experiences.
When you don’t see people that are like yourself, you don’t hear stories that you can relate to. When your experiences are so different from everybody else around you, it can leave you feeling very alone like there’s something wrong with you, like there’s something broken about you.
So it’s so important that we have these role models, that we’re sharing stories about ourselves so that we can reach those people so they don’t feel alone, so they know that they are valid and their experiences matter.
So I think it is important that for those of us who are able to share our stories, who are safe to do so, who feel comfortable to do so, I think we really should be doing that where we can. And it’s also important for other people to be giving opportunities for people to share their stories.
And that’s why I’m really grateful for the opportunity to come along and do this podcast because that’s what that’s doing. It’s given me the opportunity to share my story and to help other people to see that they’re not alone.
And that’s why it was important as well a few years ago in 2021 for Pride, I did an interview for the Trust. The comms team approached us asking for our experiences to put things out and they invited me to do an interview with them about my experiences as a trans man. It helped me a lot but it also helped a lot of other people too and I was really grateful for that opportunity.
Host: So how much has actually changed since the interview?
Matt: Well the first thing is that I’ve got beard now which I’m really, really proud of and really happy with. Wasn’t sure if that was going to happen so I’m really proud of my beard now.
I’ve also become the lead for our LGBTQ+ staff network which is a big responsibility and such a great opportunity to make changes and make improvements and help people as the network lead. Something I’ve been able to do as well is run some trans awareness and allyship sessions so I’ve been able to share my story, share my experiences, to educate others to give them a bit of a glimpse into the experiences of trans people and find out how they can help, how they can be better allies.
I’ve also been diagnosed with ADHD since that interview and that’s quite linked because since starting on testosterone, and hormones that increase testosterone also decrease my estrogen, and that can bring about the symptoms of ADHD, it can bring them out more. And I didn’t know I had ADHD before that so that was such a massive shift in my life and I’ve had to deal with that and come to terms with that as well.
But on a more positive side, the gender dysphoria that I used to feel mostly before transitioning was still quite present and a big influence on my life at the time of that interview has all but disappeared really.
Host: So you mentioned dysphoria – what is gender dysphoria? So gender dysphoria is technically defined as a marked and persistent incongruence between an individual’s experienced gender and assigned gender. So what that means in real terms is when the sex that you’re assigned at birth – so when you’re born and the doctor or the midwife said it’s a boy or it’s a girl – when that isn’t the same as your gender, your true gender, how you would identify your gender to another person. When those are different.
So when you are trans, there’s a jarring feeling between those and that can be small in some people but it can also be really distressing and intense and quite anguishing. I heard a really great analogy about sandpaper. It’s like if your assigned sex and your experienced gender are two pieces of sandpaper, the gender dysmorphia is that feeling when they rubbed together and it can be overwhelming. It can feel like that trapped inside your body with nothing you can do about it.
I felt it mostly before I got my top surgery, before I had chest surgery and that feeling of anguish, that disgust, that pain was really intense to the point where I just wanted to rip my chest off my body. And it was made even worse by the fact that I couldn’t do anything about it to the point where it can lead to depression, to feelings of suicidal thoughts, to self harm. So it can be a really awful and dark place to be and that’s the diagnosis that you need to access hormones and surgery.
That place of intense anguish and distress is where you need to be before you can get access to hormones and surgery which have a life-changing effect, which can help get rid of those feelings or make them less and that’s what really helped for me.
Having surgery was the biggest change in my life. That was a turning point for me because it was literally a huge weight off my chest and it just turned my life around so much. From feeling so broken and hating myself and even going as far as wishing for a cancer scare to be able to have an excuse to get rid of my chest, to be able to just recently doing the boxing day dip without a top on, going out in public topless, feeling that wind and the sun on my chest. That euphoric feeling that I now associate with my chest is just such a 180 turn.
So a lot of stuff has changed for absolutely the better.
Host: So how can people be a good ally to trans people within the Trust and further afield?
Matt: So first and foremost, I would say just treat us as people. The fact that we’re trans is important but it’s just one part of us.
I would say educate yourselves – there’s plenty of great resources out there that you can access. Just be mindful of your sources, there is also a lot of misinformation going on at the moment unfortunately. So when you are looking for sources of information, the best places are by trans people themselves, also organisations who actively support trans people.
To use inclusive language where you can. And that’s not about what you can’t say, it’s not saying ‘you’re not allowed to say this anymore’. It’s all about what you can say, it’s about alternative words that you can use or adding words to make sure that everybody’s included and not just some people. For example, instead of saying ‘good afternoon ladies and gentlemen’, you could switch that to ‘good afternoon everyone’ and already that’s just including everybody and it’s, you know, it’s less wordy as well so it’s a benefit to everybody.
And there’s little changes like that in your language that go a long way. We’ve recently had some sort of communications out and there was a little part of it and it just said something about ‘all genders’ instead of ‘both genders’ and it was one word and it was a little different and probably put in without much thought. But I saw it and it was a heart-warming validation, it was like feeling seen. So if you can give that feeling to somebody who is going through those feelings of gender dysphoria perhaps just by changing one little word, I think that’s worth it.
Host: Now what would your message be to give to any trans people listening in? I would say you’re valid, you matter, you’re seen and you’re loved. And you might be going through a really difficult time right now but you will be able to get through it and you will be so much stronger for it.
I’d say reach out if you can. If you can’t reach out to family or friends for whatever reason, there are organisations and local groups that are there to help and there to be your family – your chosen family. For example Hart Gables, there’s the lavender Lounge, there’s Rainbow Recovery.
And there’s also us here at the staff network, for staff, for patients, for anybody. You can find our contact details on the Trust website and we’ll be happy to speak to anybody, whoever it is. We would never turn down anyone who needs to talk.
Host: Well Matt, thanks very much. Matt Harper there.
Matt: Thank you very much.
Outro: Thank you for joining us. Until next time. You’ve been listening to NTH Voices.
Episode 16 – Volunteering with the NHS
From driving patients to hospital to offering bedside emotional support, our volunteers make a huge difference to our staff, patients and visitors.
In the latest episode of NTH Voices, members of our volunteer team discuss the different roles available, our volunteer to career scheme and what’s next for the service.
Episode 16 – Volunteering with the NHS
Intro: Welcome to North Tees and Hartlepool Voices, telling the stories of our people and community in our Trust.
Elliot: With me in the studio this morning I have Paul and Lindsay from the volunteers department. Why do a podcast now?
Paul: We’re always looking at ways to reach out to volunteers and our wider local community. Currently have seminars for volunteers drop-in sessions, we have newsletters, we have other ways of contacting our volunteers. Going right back to the basics of phoning, emails, that kind of thing.
But I guess this is an attempt for us to reach into a new way that people pick up with podcasts. So it’s kind of, this is the start of us to embrace the modern era. It’s a new, innovative way of getting our message out.
Elliot: Lindsay, what were the highlights of last year?
Lindsay: So some of the highlights for us were that we recruited and inducted 152 volunteers. Our volunteer drivers also supported nearly 5,000 patients, either taking them home from hospital, bringing them in for outpatient appointments or delivering medication or equipment out to them in the community.
2023 also saw the introduction of the volunteer to career pilot in the Trust. So from April last year we’ve been able to support, to date, 14 volunteers to develop their skills and experience and gain employment within the NHS.
Elliot: And what are we looking forward to in 2024?
Paul: More of the same really. We’ve got our thank you event arranged for June this year. National Volunteers Week is 40 years old this year so we’re going to do something a little bit special. As a Trust, we have a new chief executive, our recently appointed chair and other senior managers and we’re hoping they’ll all be there with us to celebrate. We’ll have some entertainment, catering will be top notch as ever and it’ll be a cracking night so always looking forward to that. Always work really hard but to see the benefits and the sort of appreciation of the volunteers is really something that I look forward to.
Student Volunteers Week was a few weeks ago. We look forward to that because as a Trust we’re trying to encourage as many students to get involved as volunteers as they start to build their career and develop as people.
I’ve got to say one of the highlights for my year is the session we put together just before Christmas where all our volunteers come together and wrap all the Christmas presents for all the patients that are in hospital on Christmas day. That’s a great event, love that.
And I suppose from a Trust point of view, what I’m looking forward to is sort of developing our team a little bit further. We’ve got some plans to grow our volunteer to career programme which is helping people move into employment within the health and social care services.
We’re looking to implement the investors in volunteers which, if you are from a human resource background you will be aware of. The investors in people which is a structure around how well do we look after staff. The investors in volunteers is a structure around how well we look after volunteers. I guess the bottom line for me, what I’m looking forward to is recruiting more volunteers to help and support more people in our local community.
Elliot: So how can people help?
Paul: Very easy. If you have a few hours to spare, you’d like to help some people who are possibly a little bit less well off than you or definitely more vulnerable and you’d like to contribute to your local community, get in touch.
We have a phone number – 01642 383 933. There is a website. Go on to the Trust website. It will lead you to just type into search ‘volunteers’ and there is other email addresses to put in there. Just contact us and we’ll give you all the information you need to sort of decide whether volunteering within the hospital is for you and how you can do it.
Elliot: And I think lastly, what do volunteers get involved with within the Trust?
Lindsay: So we’ve got a variety of roles that volunteers can get involved with. The first being volunteer welcomers. So they are the friendly face at the main reception areas and they will meet and greet people coming in, just make sure that they know where they’re going and just take them to their appointment or department the quickest way possible.
We also have a group of clinical volunteers who will provide support in the ward areas. So they will chat to the patients, keep them company, they’ll assist during meal times, encourage the patients to eat and drink and generally just try and make the patients’ experience a little bit better.
We’ve got a volunteer driver role so they will take patients home who are being discharged from hospital and also bring them in for outpatient appointments.
And then we do have a group of discharge support volunteers as well. So they help patients who are going home who are at risk of loneliness and isolation and they’ll just generally keep in touch with them after discharge. They’ll signpost them to other services and organisations in the community and just check in with them and check that they’re doing okay after their hospital stay.
Elliot: And all the information that they need is on the Trust website?
Paul: Yes.
Elliot: Well Lindsay and Paul, thank you.
Paul: Thank you.
Lindsay: Thank you.
Outro: Thank you for joining us. Until next time. You’ve been listening to NTH Voices.
Episode 15 – Celebrating International Women’s Day
In episode 15 of NTH Voices, we chat with Natasha McManus, pelvic health physio and the lead for our women’s staff network, and Helen Waller, staff health and wellbeing advisor.
They discuss what International Women’s Day means to them, from both a health and workforce perspective, and how we can further support equality across gender.
Episode 15 – Celebrating International Women’s Day
Intro: Welcome to North Tees and Hartlepool Voices, telling the stories of our people and community in our Trust.
Elliot: And today in the studio we have Helen Waller and Natasha McManus and you’ve come to talk about…
Natasha: International Women’s Day.
Elliot: And my first question is what is International Women’s Day? So for me it’s a celebration of all the social, economical, cultural and political achievements that women around the world have achieved to date. It’s obviously an annually celebrated day for women.
Helen: My side of things, it’s essential for employers not to only just celebrate the achievements of women but also actively support their wellbeing in the workplace.
Elliot: So what does International Women’s Day mean to you personally and why do you feel it’s important to celebrate?
Helen: As I’ve said, it’s actively supporting the wellbeing in our workplace and as a health and wellbeing advisor, I think it’s just highlighting the gender-specific health issues that women go through.
Just highlighting what we need to be doing better and what are the issues and what are we celebrating.
Natasha: And for me it’s very much like we’re celebrating the past but we’re also inspiring the future. I’m a woman, I’m a mother of three daughters so I’m not sure if that’s enough in itself of why I want to celebrate International Women’s Day.
But the idea that once upon a time we couldn’t work, vote, you know, do anything really without some sort of authoritative person over us and for me that’s just absurd and we’ve moved on so much since that time. So to celebrate the people that put us in the position that we are today is such an important thing for me and then obviously to inspire the future because we’ve still got those issues out there, such as the pay gap is still a thing, you know, we’ve got healthcare inequalities for women.
There’s so much that we could inspire for the future.
Elliot: Can you give us a significant moment or an experience that shaped your perspective on the equality of gender?
Helen: I think listening to the stories for people’s menopause journey. I think that we have done so much in the last few years but we shouldn’t have been at that point, it should have been sort of business as normal for years and years and years. I think that’s what sort of shaped my experience, my perspective on gender equality – that we haven’t got equality in that aspect of things.
Natasha: Yeah, I agree and for me, I’ve got so much. If I’m honest, I think this all started for me when I was a 10-year-old girl singing Wannabe on the steps at school, very girl power.
I’ve very much been like that forever and I’ve always sort of hid under a rock of the fear of being called the feminist and I did used to think that I hated that terminology and didn’t enjoy that narrative, but actually now I’m quite happy to be called that because I think it is an empowering statement – to be someone that’s supporting women.
There’s so many things to think about that’s changed my perspective. So, you know, the Spice Girls were number one for me and then as I’ve gone through my life, there’s loads of little parts of my personal development and then going into my professional development that’s highlighted the importance of gender equality.
For example, 84% of our workforce is women. I’m a pelvic health physiotherapist so I see women at their most vulnerable. It’s really empowering to know that we’re there to support these ladies but historically that support has never been there.
I read a book at my Nan’s house about the 1930s and it was talking about the gender pay gap and I actually nearly fell off my chair thinking that these issues were raised in the 1930s and they’re still on our agenda today. So there’s just so much that’s constantly been fed into me, that’s opened my mind.
But not to think about, you know, little things like this for example – I’m a physiotherapist by background and I’ve seen a lot of patients with an ACL (anterior cruciate ligament) injury. And we see and we hear that quite a lot, everyone knows what an ACL injury is and there’s about an average, say in 2019, the statistics suggest that 15,000 people experience an ACL injury.
But realistically, approximately 12,000 women experienced birth trauma and really do we have the same amount of support for ladies experiencing birth trauma as we do people experiencing ligament trauma in their knee and when you jump on a trampoline, that’s okay. And we just ignore that narrative, but falling over because your knee’s giving way, we’ll fix that.
For me what’s worse is, it’s so mad to think, that those healthcare inequalities are there, birthing people out there. It’s just, it’s madness. You know, we’re trying to repopulate the world and we have to live with the consequences and be quiet about it and it’s taboo.
Again, a lot of mine is linked to pelvic health inequalities because of the job I’m in as a pelvic health physiotherapist. We are getting there, you know. We’ve had a new appointed women’s ambassador, Dame Lesley Regan, and she’s documented and brought out the women’s strategy which is amazing, and we’ve got the 10-year plan which has got lots of important plans for women’s health which is unbelievable and incredible. It just highlights that inequality that has been there because these things are on the agenda now.
My biggest one I would like anybody to take home from this is go away and read The Invisible Woman book. It is fantastic. One of the big things that blew my mind in the book was women are more likely to be seriously injured in a car accident today. So that is a thing. Just purely because of their genetic makeup and crash dummies are built on the size and the weight distribution of men.
Finally, for me, I’ve got loads ticking on there but let’s not forget our trans community. It’s been difficult for women but can you imagine how difficult it is for our trans community. For example, this year it’s about promoting inclusion and inspiring inclusion – so this is my little inspiration, my little food for thought.
So cervical screening in itself is really difficult for some women. Just put yourself and your thoughts into the trans community that have to go through a process of cervical screening. It’s not just the situation being in the clinic, but it’s also attending a woman’s outpatients. It’s also revisiting the trauma that you’ve experienced resurfacing memories.
I follow a trans man on social media and they’ve given me such great food for thought. So if there’s anything that you can do for this International Women’s Day to inspire inclusion is go out and have a little look around trans women, trans men and the issues that people experience on a day-to-day basis that we just don’t even consider sometimes.
Elliot: What are the practical steps then for individuals to take and promote gender diversity and inclusion?
Natasha: So obviously I am the women’s network lead so I’m going to say come and join our women’s network. Our women’s network is open to absolutely everybody, so please come and join us.
Any and every support is fantastic but joining the networks, not just my women’s network, we’ve got other networks within the Trust. So please reach out. We do like to think of ourselves as one network, although we have little side groups within them, subgroups. We do think of us as one Trust network.
Within the networks, we do little days like this, you know, supporting International Women’s Day highlighting the issues of healthcare inequality for women, we’ve got the trans awareness weeks, we’ve got awareness and understanding and education.
We don’t know it all, even sat here today, I fear that I might say something that might impact or hurt somebody and it’s not through any fault. I don’t know everything. I’m not completely educated in all the narrative out there. It’s just having that language isn’t it?
You know, we are emerging, we’re changing, we’re growing, we’re learning so it’s all about educating yourself. I’m not perfect and we’re not expecting anyone to be perfect but go out there and educate yourself and ask the question why.
Helen: Yeah, and just feel free that if we are saying something wrong and it feels uncomfortable for you, then just highlight it.
Natasha: Tell us. Yeah come and tell us, join our podcast.
Helen: I think it’s just being inclusive, as Natasha has said, that we just want to go out and be celebrating the differences but also acknowledging the sort of indifferences as well. So that we can sort of go forward and be a better human being.
Natasha: Definitely. So the aim of the game like we’ve said is to inspire inclusion this year for International Women’s Day so we’re truly trying to include all women and embracing, you know, the diversity – race, age, ability, faith, body image and how everybody identifies. Just being supportive of all women out there and trying our very best.
Elliot: Final thoughts from each of you?
Helen: I would hope that people get on board with International Women’s Day, that you think ‘Oh, it’s just another day’ and ‘do they ever shut up’ and ‘why is there a particular day just for women’. There is International Men’s Day and hopefully we would have the men’s network lead, and I’ll be sort of coming for the wellbeing slant of men’s discussion. But I think it’s just celebrating it.
Natasha: Yeah, like it’s crazy to think of how far we’ve come in such a short space of time really. Like, looking back at my Nan’s era, it was totally different to what we are now. So let’s keep changing, you know – the period poverty movement, you know being aware of period poverty, menopause – we’ve got wonderful Helen leading our menopause support groups. And just know that obviously we’re linking with South Tees now and they’ve got good support with menopause as well.
And it’s trying to encourage that growth and that support of 84% of our workforce who possibly need us at any point of their career. Because it’s difficult isn’t it? I’ve just come back from maternity leave and the brain fog is real, so I can only imagine what I’m going to be like at perimenopause, so please help me Helen.
So yeah, it’s just about that, you know, support and educate and just, you know, ask questions.
Elliot: Well, thank you both, take care.
Natasha: Thank you.
Helen: Thank you.
Outro: Thank you for joining us. Until next time. You’ve been listening to NTH Voices.
Episode 14 – A letter to myself, with Mike Worden
Our latest episode of NTH Voices sees Mike Worden, managing director of NTH Solutions, look back on his life and struggles during childhood.
Mike wrote and recorded an emotional ‘Letter to Myself’ exploring how early difficulties became the lessons that taught him the most.
Episode 14 – A letter to myself, with Mike Worden
Intro: Welcome to North Tees and Hartlepool Voices, telling the stories of our people and community in our Trust.
Andy: My name is Andy Tingle and this morning I’ve got the privilege of having the managing director of NTH Solutions in the studio, Mr Mike Worden. Welcome Mike.
Mike: Nice to see you, Andy.
Andy: Yeah it’s been a long time since we’ve cross our paths and had a chat and things like that.
Mike: I’m not sure someone’s ever explained it as a privilege to be locked in a room with me before but I’ll take that.
Andy: It is a privilege to have you down because I know how busy you are on the site and everything else with everything that’s going on and you and the team flat out completely throughout. Both sides at the moment with Hartlepool as well.
Yeah we’ve brought you in the studios today to talk about a letter to myself. What is a letter to myself?
Mike: Well I mean in many ways do you remember the famous advert, you know it does exactly what it says on the tin. I think in many ways that’s what this is. It’s a very simple concept but in many ways it’s got a lot of deeper, more useful purposes than you might just think it has on the on the face of it, particularly in terms of your personal and your professional development.
So for example, a letter to myself. Obviously it’s a letter to myself.
But if you took it in the concept of, as I did as I’ll read out in a moment or two, about a letter to my younger self in the past. You’re able to use it in a very reflective way to look at that and think about the journey that you’ve gone on.
I guess it is a journey, in terms of personal development. If you took it as a letter to my present self, you could use it as a practice for appreciation or gratitude for what you have or the things that you’ve gone through. And equally, you know, to your future self in many ways, you can use that for goal setting. Again, you know, reflecting on who you want to be in the future.
So it’s one of those elements that got my interest because it’s simple in its nature and I always like to keep things simple. But actually you can use it in a number of different ways depending on what you feel is going to be most beneficial. Yeah, you could use it as like a developing tool or whatever else – a reflective tool within yourself. Yeah. That’s great stuff.
And I guess that brings on to why did I write one really.
Andy: Yes.
Mike: There’s a number of different reasons for that if I’m being honest to myself about it.
Firstly I believe in the Schwarz Rounds. So I’ve only done a couple of them and I’m down to do one shortly around impostor syndrome. But I just believe it’s so critically important when we’re all so busy to create a space and environment where we take time out from everything and we can sit and openly and safely discuss things that are maybe weighing heavy on our minds or in our background thoughts.
But, you know, we need to give them time to circulate or just to sit and listen to others. I think that’s an incredibly simple yet incredibly powerful way of helping people be themselves and come to terms with things. So I’m a big believer in it. That’s one of the reasons why I wanted to do a letter to myself.
It first came up in terms of the Schwartz Rounds and, as I say, I’m a big believer. I think a letter to myself – it was one of those things that I, you know, very often find myself or in conversations with other people, when you’ve had a drink or you’re sat around with family and friends, say ‘oh I wish I’d known that when I was younger’. And so I really bought into the concept of what it could be, and again I think there’s other uses for it.
But, for me, I thought it would be quite interesting practice to talk to the younger Mike and just talk about some of the challenges that, with hindsight, you look back at and they don’t seem that big. But when you’re a young Mike or a younger version – doesn’t have to be a young one, it could be just in any time frame previously. You know, they always seems so incredibly important at the time. So I thought it was a really good practice – that was one of the reasons.
Thirdly, I think it’s really important in a senior leadership role that if we’re going to encourage and recommend that people engage with and do things like the Schwartz Round or you know address previously I think taboo, maybe not taboo, but hidden topics around your feelings and how there’s elements of insecurity or stress and pressure on people, that we don’t we really create an environment for that.
It’s important for me, I think for senior leaders, to lead by example on that.
Andy: Exactly.
Mike: And to engage with those things and to talk openly about these things because I hope then that they will encourage other people to engage and get the benefits that I’ve got from them. There’s three things there.
I think finally on that last one, when I read my letter it’ll make more sense and this is certainly not to do with the Schwartz Rounds because that’s a very safe and confidential environment, but the challenge I wanted to set myself was to really share the reflections that I’ve put into my letter to myself, which I’ll read, and as people will hear. And they’re very personal to me, you know.
And I actually invited my daughter to the Schwartz Round to sit in the audience so, you know, she was hearing the things that I’m saying. And I thought, there’s no better way to really truly test if I’m kind of walking the walk as such to actually put myself out there and share these things I now know from doing things like this, that I truly have kind of learned these things as I’ve gone through it. Which is why I want to share the letter because it was a test for myself to put myself out there and be vulnerable and I’m okay with it.
Andy: You mentioned the Schwartz Round and everything else, how did they receive it and the reactions of people there?
Mike: Yeah, I mean that’s confidential obviously so I don’t want to overly share too many things that we discussed within there. But there was three wonderful speakers. I was obviously one of those, not I was particularly wonderful, you know. The other guys were amazing.
The dialogue, I mean the letters themselves are the letters themselves, but the dialogue and the engagement and the commonality of the themes that we discussed in both, not only the one that we did at Hartlepool but we replicated it over at North Tees, was wonderful. It really was a great conversation to be had.
I won’t say any more of the detail around it because it is confidential in that nature. But I would highly recommend people to attend.
Andy: I was just about to say would you encourage people to write a letter to themselves?
Mike: There’s two answers to that. I mean that’s a very personal answer I think, so it’s up to people to decide their own answer on whether or not they want to do that.
But what I will say is, for me, there is something powerful about writing something down. I mean we often have conversations and various bits and, you know, we might send messages and texts and WhatsApps and all that stuff, but actually spending the time to sit, reflect and then write down. Physically writing something down – there’s something very cathartic and powerful about that.
So, for me personally, I would recommend it a great exercise to do. What you then do with that or, you know, don’t do anything with it. Just do it as the reflective cathartic practice that I found it to be or do more with it – that’s up to the individual. But I would highly recommend doing it. Just the benefits that I’ve had.
Andy: Yeah, it’s like people writing a diary and things like that, it gives them something to reflect on but to sit down and to write a letter and think about it and to open up to yourself.
Mike: Very often we’re not honest with ourselves.
Andy: When they say it’s all right not to be all right and things like that, I could well believe how powerful it is, the power of the pen.
Thank you for that, Mike. If we can get you to read your story out for us now please.
Mike: Dear Mike, there is an age-old saying that says the story you tell yourself is the story you will become. And you need to hear our story.
I am the only person that will ever truly know you so for once in your life, will you listen? I know it feels like you’ve been dealt a tough hand. You wonder why it couldn’t be you that is the clever person in the class, why am I the one that is dyslexic sent for special remedial lessons while everyone else sits in the normal class?
I know you wonder why you’re not the popular one who’s friends with all the cool kids. I know you don’t do some of the things you really want to do because you’re afraid it’ll be embarrassing and people might laugh or judge you. I know you desperately want to say hello to the girl you really like but you daren’t. I know you think you’re the chubby one and why am I the one with all the spots, while someone else has perfect skin?
Why am I the one with two left feet and always picked to stand in goal? Why am I the one whose parents can’t afford to send me on the school trips and who buy my school uniform from the local charity shop? Why am I the one whose parents don’t live together?
I know these things are very real for you and life feels very unfair but I’m afraid there is a reality that life is just not fair. But there is your opportunity, Mike.
Life isn’t fair and it’s equally unfair to everyone. Life owes you nothing and if you sit back and blame things for the way they are or everyone else for having things that you don’t, then life will always seem unfair. You need to stop blaming life for the way it is and own your own future.
Now here is the best bit. What you believe is unfair right now are actually the things that will drive you to be who you are today, and today is pretty good.
Feeling like you’re thick and can’t learn simply isn’t true. you will realise there were reasons for this and that actually there are different forms of what people call intelligence.
But more than any of that, not having things come naturally to you means you learn the value of discipline and hard work. You will learn that nothing of real value is given to you in life and hard work, consistency and simply outworking everyone else will more than compensate for any intelligence you think you may or may not have.
And actually, you will see that the true value of achievement isn’t actually achieving the goal or the outcome which you’re working for, but it’s the self-belief and the confidence that you’ll gain from the dedication and hard work that was needed to reach it.
Having the discipline to consistently do the things that you may not want to do in the moment will absolutely give you the things you want in the future. For you, Mike, daily discipline will give you the freedom to be you.
I know not being the popular kid feels a very hard one right now. But it means you will learn the incredible power of not needing to be liked. But rest assured, you’re not a weirdo or locked up in jail, you will learn to cherish the friends you have and realise that giving someone else the power to make you feel good or bad based on whether or not they like you or agree with you or laugh at you is literally crazy.
Please listen to this again, Mike, it is so incredibly important for you. Don’t give someone else the power to make you feel good or bad. You know what is right or wrong. When you do a good job or a bad one, be your own judge and be very careful with whom you give that power to.
Now with a twist of irony that makes life the puzzle that it is, not needing others’ approval will give you belief in yourself. This will give you values. Having values makes you authentic and, ironically, authentic will make people like you. So being the fat spotty lad picked to be in goal isn’t easy but there is a wonderful thing called genetics. And you may think they’re working against you right now but sometime soon, you will start to grow and when you pick up the rugby ball and a barbell or two, you will never look back.
But, again and I want to be very clear on this, Mike, what you have is not god-given. It’s earned. So don’t sit back and accept things as guaranteed. Go and earn it.
So this will be annoying for you right now but guess what, Mum was right. Playing rugby is good for you. The anger you feel gets channelled on the pitch and you learn to respect authority while standing your ground and being heard. You learn the value of teamwork and how different skills, strengths and weaknesses are the key to success in a team.
So the toughest one for you I’ve left until last. You feel embarrassed about being the poor kid in class, and I know you feel it’s unfair. But this is one you can own and you do. For good or bad, it will be a driving force for success in your career. So what feels unfair right now will allow you to value what it means to have stood on your own, to have earned everything that you have in your life and provides the perspective you need to appreciate what you have earned.
But be careful with this one. There is always more to be had and money does not mean happiness. In fact your lesson to learn, Mike, is that the never-ending comparison will kill any hopes of your own happiness.
So in roundup, my friend, just keep going. Learn to use the things you feel are against you, accept the things you can’t change and let them go. But own everything else you can change.
And most importantly of all, don’t stand back and blame the world for the way it is. If you don’t like it, keep working and trying until you change it. And on one final note, if there is any chance of time travel, say yes to the Canadian rugby contract.
Andy: That was Mike Worden and a letter to myself.
Outro: Thank you for joining us. Until next time. You’ve been listening to NTH Voices.
Episode 13 – Transforming our digital services as a group partnership
In our latest episode of NTH Voices, we’re joined by just some of the team leading on collaborative digital work across our group partnership with South Tees Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust.
Ken, Jay and Maxine discuss how the two trusts are already working together collaboratively and putting our clinical staff at the very forefront of our digital ambitions.
Episode 13 – Transforming our digital services as a group partnership
Intro: Welcome to North Tees and Hartlepool Voices, telling the stories of our people and community in our Trust.
Colin: This is NTH Voices and my name is Colin Overton. We broadcast to the patients, staff and visitors to the NHS hospital trusts across the Tees Valley.
Today in the studio, we have some of the digital team and I would like them to introduce themselves and their position within the Trust.
Ken: Hi Colin, great to be here today. My name is Ken Anderson and I’m the chief information and technology officer at North Tees and Hartlepool Trust.
Jay: Thanks Colin, my name is Jay Vasani. I’m a consultant gastroenterologist and also the clinical lead for the digital program and I work alongside my colleague Andy Adair at South Tees.
Maxine: Thanks Colin, I am Maxine Crutwell, I am programme manager for the group model working across both North Tees and Hartlepool and South Tees hospitals.
Colin: We’ll start off with you Ken. What is the longer term vision for your group digital work?
Ken: So Colin, a digital data and technology strategy which is really ambitious and wholly aligned to the group’s strategic objectives. It will deliver digitally enabled services which provide exceptional care, quality and safety for all of our patients, a single view of information for our clinicians, with group collaboration at its core.
Colin: Thank you. Jay, for you. The digital strategy is a key priority for clinicians. What work streams are you currently delivering?
Jay: Absolutely, Colin, as you said it is a key priority for all clinical staff. So as part of our group strategy, we’re quite clear that we want clinicians involved in all steps of the journey, if you like. So as part of that we’ve had several clinical engagement sessions. Two already have been done and there are two others planned.
We’ve also started work on undertaking a gap analysis which involves seeing what systems South Tees have, what clinical systems we have here at North Tees and Hartlepool and see how we can bridge the gap.
We’ve also started pilot work with our pathology teams who work across North and South Tees and our digital strategy is already currently in draft form.
We’ve also started work on looking at having a joint help desk to respond to queries from clinicians who are struggling with digital systems and we are also quite clear that we can’t do this work without having some extra resource so we’re also looking at how we can bring all that into the group.
Colin: So what will you be doing, Ken, over the next 18 months?
Ken: So our goal is to support the group clinical strategy. In this respect, the digital programme will be a key enabler. We’re currently recruiting into six clinical boards and the expectation is that they will be up and running from this April or early may.
As the clinical board developed, we’re going to seek to understand their technical and their data requirements. In the meantime, there’s a lot of work we can just be getting on with. In particular, we’ve already started working on how we can enable seamless working between the two trusts.
Over the next few months, we’ll be ensuring that our clinicians can connect to their clinical systems irrespective of which site that they’re on. We’re already investigating how we can deliver a single IT service desk – effectively a one-stop shop for all of our digital services.
On the back of an event that we held with our community colleagues, we’re looking to set up a user group to deal with some of the issues that they experience on a daily basis. Within the next 18 months, we’re looking to identify ways in which our systems can share information to provide up-to-date patient level data at the point of care.
We’re also going to do more in the way of what is referred to as single sign on. So this is a secure way in which our clinicians can access a range of systems without having to remember multiple passwords.
Overall, the digital strategy aims to improve both our staff and patients with a seamless experience to deliver proactive systems of care.
Colin: Okay, so you’re telling me that the work will be clinically led. Jay, what reassurances can you give to the group?
Jay: Absolutely, Colin, so we want to reassure all our clinical staff that the work we’re doing will be clinically led. The two engagement sessions we’ve had so far have been incredibly helpful. We’ve heard loud and clear that staff want to see several improvements, including having access quickly across the two trusts, having things like, as Ken mentioned, single sign on so people can log on to clinical systems to look after patients quickly.
The community engagement session has also been helpful and we’re looking to set up what we call a clinical reference group to take this work forward. We have two other engagement sessions planned in March for the rest of our staff, including nurses, allied health professionals, midwives, corporate staff and others.
As we mentioned before, our pathology service is already learning from collaborating digitally and we’re going to continue to tell clinical staff that if they have any other ideas thoughts or questions, then please feel free to contact any of us in the digital group.
Colin: Maxine, how will you involve the patient voice in the transformation?
Maxine: Thanks Colin. So I started in post nine weeks ago and one of the things that I really want to bring to the group model is patient voice. It’s something that I feel very passionate about. It’s integral in terms of laying that foundation across not only our digital work but our vision for the group model as well as our clinical strategy.
So I’m delighted to see that we have recently commissioned Healthwatch to do our external consultation work. And I think what Healthwatch as a statutory organisation will bring to the group work is very much that breadth and depth of our local communities that we serve. We have such a huge diverse demographic population and it’s important that we reach all those voices to make sure that we’re clinically digitally informed in terms of how we work going forward as a group.
Internally, our patient involvement teams will absolutely mirror the Healthwatch consultation so we’ll have both that internal and external viewpoint and that work will take place over March to July. At the end of July, we’ll receive a list of recommendations that we as a group are accountable to.
And what that’ll create is a local dialogue with our local communities as well to make sure that we have that open conversation about what can and can’t be achieved. Our local population is our biggest stakeholder so it’s important that we get this right from the earliest point.
Colin: Jay, just a quick one to you. Can you give us some examples of where services are already working across the group and how digital is actually supporting clinicians to deliver?
Jay: Thanks Colin, yeah, sure. So we have some strong examples already. Pathology to start with. The pathology teams have already started to work cross site with a solid structure and our digital and IT teams are supporting them to deliver this work.
It’s still early days so we know we have some teething problems which we have to get through but equally we’ve learned a lot from this work which we hope will help us in spreading this across when we roll out the digital programmes. Our ICT workforce currently work across site and will continue to collaborate and visit each other’s teams to see what challenges people face, especially what clinical staff face in real time.
We’ll constantly try and improve this work.
Colin: Ken, will there be any opportunity for clinicians and staff to actually test each other’s digital systems and see what works?
Ken: There’ll definitely be that opportunity and I think that’s one of the things that came out really clearly with the clinical engagement is that clinicians at all levels across a wide range of specialties, they were really keen to understand from each other. And one of the great opportunities of the two trusts working more closely together is that we can identify which systems work best and we want to familiarise respective colleagues on each other’s systems and learn from each other.
So even just yesterday at the community session that we run, the teams were talking about various apps that they were using so there’s just really one very small example and something we can put into practice quite quickly.
Jay was saying it’s got to be clinically led and this is really important.
Colin: Thank you for that. Maxine, final one to you. How will you keep the staff up to date and communicate with the workforce on the digital plans and changes that are foreseen?
Maxine: So that’s a great question and it’s really important that we keep our clinical and corporate teams informed of the work that we’re doing throughout this journey because it is a journey that we’re going on over the next year to two years to make sure that we really respond to what clinicians are seeing.
So we would welcome feedback on how often those communication messages go out because we are aware that our workforce receives lots of messages, are juggling lots of things daily so it’s getting that balance right across board.
I have to say both our communications teams across both sites have been absolutely fantastic in supporting the group model work and we’ll continue to work with both teams to send out messages at the same time so everybody receives the messages at the same time in the right way.
The clinical triumphant, once they’re in place which is expected to be around May time for the clinical work streams. Once they’re in place, they’re kind of our key business change managers in terms of disseminating information through their clinical work stream so we’ll absolutely be utilising that workforce.
We know South Tees have got a great staff Facebook page and just talking to Jodie this morning, North Tees and Hartlepool are going to be replicating that as well. So we’ll have a staff Facebook page which is such an easy way of promoting positive messages and getting engagement as well.
So there’s lots of different ways in which that we’re going to make sure that we put those comms messages out. It’s just getting the right balance and not overloading staff. But absolute commitment to keeping people up to date.
Colin: Thank you for that. Hopefully we can have another session in the future and we can just upgrade everything that we’ve been talking about today.
So can I thank you very much for coming in.
Ken: You’re very welcome.
Maxine: Thank you, Colin.
Outro: Thank you for joining us. Until next time. You’ve been listening to NTH Voices.
Episode 12 – Meet our new group chief executive Stacey Hunter
Stacey Hunter joins us this week as group chief executive of both our Trust and South Tees Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust.
In our latest episode of NTH Voices, we get to know a little bit more about Stacey, talk through her ambitions for our two trusts and quiz her on all things Teesside. (Yep – we’re talking parmos here.)
Episode 12 – Meet our new group chief executive Stacey Hunter
Intro: Welcome to North Tees and Hartlepool Voices, telling the stories of our people and community in our Trust.
Elliot: You’re listening to NTH Voices, my name’s Elliot Kennedy.
With me in the studio today I have the new joint CEO Stacey Hunter. Welcome.
To start with can I ask you to introduce yourself to our listeners?
Stacey: You can. Good morning, everyone. My name’s Stacy, I’m super excited to join you guys in what’s only a couple of days now actually. So I start officially on the first of February.
Just a little bit about myself – I’m originally from Hull, I have worked in the NHS now for 38 years, the last 25 others in various different leadership roles. Spent quite a chunk of that time in Leeds for just under 20 years and I’m joining you from being the chief executive at Salisbury hospital.
So quite a big geographical move because I headed south for my first chief exec post but I’ve spent the vast majority of my personal and professional life living and working in the north of England.
Elliot: So what does it mean to become the first joint CEO of both North Tees and Hartlepool and South Tees Hospital Foundation Trust?
Stacey: Yeah, it’s actually an absolute privilege. I know this is something that the two organisations have thought about and done work on over these last couple of years so I’m really thrilled to have been given the opportunity.
They are both really good trusts with some excellent services and good reputation so lots to build on. And I’m really looking forward to working with communities where there are quite significant health needs and also some inequities in how people access care.
So quite a lot for us to think about as we, I guess, lever the benefits of working collectively more than we do already.
Elliot: And can you explain a little bit about the vision for the joint partnership between the two trusts?
Stacey: Yeah, as I say, it’s very early days because I’ve not actually started yet. And my style I guess and preference will be to work and build that vision with people who work in our services. So I have some thoughts about how you build on the best of both organisations and, as I’ve referenced already, something about how we get more equity for the communities that are served by both of the trusts.
And I think how we use our collective influence to secure resources into the Tees Valley and think about how we make the best use of all of the facilities we’ve got available to us across the four hospitals and the various community teams that work as part of the two organisations.
And then there’s something for me about working really closely with our partners. So our colleagues in the local authorities, you obviously know those communities really well, but our broader partners in education, some of our universities – just to think about how we really get the benefits out of some of the things that anchor institutes which people may not have heard of.
But basically big organisations that are spending, you know, lots of resources in the local area and really maximise the benefit of those for the people who live there.
Elliot: Will you be splitting your time between both organisations?
Stacey: Yeah, it’s a really good question and obviously there’ll be some practicalities around actually certain things happening in the different organisations at certain times.
But one of the big challenges, one of the things that I’ll really want to work with people to get right is how you can be visible when you’re covering such a broad area. Yeah, I think there are just under 18,000 staff in total that work across the two trusts and, as you know, four hospitals in the group and then community teams based at several locations.
So I’ll be working hard to make sure that I’m as visible as possible. Clearly the chief exec is, you know, an important role and very symbolic for the trusts but not the only person. And we have a leadership team, we’ve got local leaders in all of our services and for me it will be about how I can support and amplify the work that those local leadership teams are doing.
Elliot: Your three priorities for this next year? Oh, this is a really good question. Well, my first priority is to I guess transition and settle well. So there is something about, although I did a lot of due diligence on the job, I don’t know the area as well as many of the staff who work in your teams will so I want to spend time working with people who live there and the staff understanding what matters to people in the Tees Valley.
I think then there is, as I’ve already said, there’s something about how we might create some immediate priorities around making sure that we’ve got equitable access to services for people. Whether they’re living in Hartlepool or across in Northallerton and everywhere in between. Because I suspect there are some differences in that approach that have just grown up with the two separate trusts over the years.
And then, thirdly, I want to make sure that we’ve forged really good partnerships with some of those other partners I’ve already mentioned.
Health doesn’t operate as a kind of island just in hospitals or our community health teams. We’re part of a much broader set of partners to really secure the benefits for the people that live in the local area.
Elliot: If you want our colleagues to take one key message from this conversation, what would it be?
Stacey: That’s an interesting question. As I’ve highlighted, I think there are some excellent services and practices in both the two trusts from what I’ve been able to gather to date.
I guess my key message would be that working even more closely together, we can be even better and make sure that the services for the people who live in the Tees Valley and rely on us are absolutely first class and consistent every time that people need them.
Elliot: What do you think are the main challenges facing the NHS at this moment in time and, of course, for the future?
Stacey: Yeah, I think undoubtedly anyone listening to this that works in the NHS or I think experiences services will know that we often struggle to have sufficient staff.
So I really welcomed the national workforce plan that came into effect probably about six to eight months ago now but we’ve got a long way to go to populate that plan over the coming years to make sure that our teams have enough people in them to meet the demand.
And I think that’s probably the number one thing if you talk to our colleagues that they would say we need to focus on and prioritise over the coming years.
Elliot: Now, that’s enough about work because I’m sure that people realise that you are actually a human being and you have other things to do other than working in the NHS. So what do you do to relax?
Stacey: No, it’s another great question. So I guess a couple of things.
I’m a big dog lover, I’ve got an eight-year-old spaniel called Finn who has a very special place in my heart and we got a puppy before Christmas. A new cockapoo who’s 15-weeks-old called Daphne who is occupying lots of time and attention, as you might imagine puppies do.
And then when I’m not out dog walking and getting a bit of fresh air, I like to go sailing. It’s something I’ve only done for seven or eight years. I’m still more enthusiastic than I am competent but very, very keen on it and enjoy getting out on the water and you know practicing some of those very kind of practical skills that you need to be safe in a boat.
Elliot: Now I’ve been sent a few questions about a little test about your knowledge about Teesside. So what is a parmo?
Stacey: Now I’ve never had a parmo is the first thing to say, so I’m sure that will be put right within a within a few weeks. But I have seen parmos and had a good friend who lived in the North East who used to talk about them.
So I understand that they’re either chicken or pork. My preference would be chicken, I have to say. With some bechamel sauce and cheese, well lots of cheese, covering them. And then I think basically you can eat them in a sandwich or with anything in the North East. So I’m looking forward to getting an opportunity to try one.
Elliot: I’m sure we’ll sort that out for you.
Stacey: They do sound lovely, if not slightly calorific.
Elliot: They are, yeah.
So what are the travelling fans for the Boro called? To insultingly call the Boro fans?
Stacey: Now I do know this. I know they’re call smoggies, relating back I guess to the industrial times in the North East. Which feels like, at some level, it might have been a name to be a little bit rude or offensive but actually I’m sure that people who support the Boro are very proud of that history.
And certainly when you drive through Middlesbrough, you know, you’re able to see if you like all the landscape that reminds you of that industrial past which will be very very proud for the people who live there.
Elliot: Now, of our local regions who do you know? We’ve got comedian Bob Mortimer – local or not?
Stacey: Local.
Elliot: Chris Rea?
Stacey: I think he’s local. I think he is, I couldn’t be certain.
Elliot: Or Emilia Clark from Game of Thrones – is she local?
Stacey: Ah, no. Now I know she’s not local, she’s from London. So I’m guessing that means Chris Rea must be local but I couldn’t tell you which part of the Tees Valley he’s from.
Elliot: Right, which was invented in Stockton – the match stick or the cigarette lighter?
Stacey: Oh, now this will be a guess because I don’t know. 50/50. Let’s see. I’m going to go the match stick.
Elliot: Correct, yeah. So you’ve done your homework.
Is there anything else you’d like to add?
Stacey: All I would want to add is that I’m really looking forward to getting started. I’ve had opportunity to meet a few people in the team but obviously not very many yet.
I start in a couple of days and look forward to getting out and about and meeting some of the staff that work in the teams, you know, which is always the absolute best part of the job to be honest.
Elliot: Right well I’ll call it an end there. Thank you, Stacey, for talking to us and we look forward to having you down in the studio in the very near future.
Stacey: Lovely, thank you very much.
Elliot: All right then, take care.
Stacey: Thank you for joining us. Until next time. You’ve been listening to NTH Voices.
Episode 11 – What is measles?
Cases of measles are rising in England. And it’s more than just a rash with one in five children needing a hospital visit.
In this latest episode of NTH Voices, deputy director of infection, prevention and control Rebecca Denton-Smith discusses what measles is and how we can all work to keep ourselves and others safe.
Episode 11 – What is measles?
Intro: Welcome to North Tees and Hartlepool voices, telling the stories of our people and community in our Trust.
Andrew: Hello, you’re listening to NTH Voices. With me in the studio, I have Rebecca Denton-Smith. Hello Rebecca.
Rebecca: Hi.
Andrew: What is Measles?
Rebecca: Measles is a contagious infection. It’s a viral infection and it spreads really easily.
Andrew: And why is it so serious?
Rebecca: Measles has been around for a long time but currently it’s quite serious because it can affect people. Especially those under the age of five and adults over the age of 20 or any at risk groups that might have a low immune system can have some longer term effects.
But most people do get over measles quite quickly. However, some of the longer term effects include things like pneumonia and meningitis so it’s really important that we minimise the spread of this infection.
Andrew: And cases arising across the UK. Are we seeing a rise here?
Rebecca: Thankfully not the moment but they are rising across the UK. And the main reason for that is because people haven’t had their immunisation. So really it’s just a plea to make sure that people have had their children and themselves vaccinated.
And that we’d like to keep that under control for our region just to stop any unnecessary pressures on our services.
Andrew: And what are the symptoms?
Rebecca: Symptoms include high temperatures, runny blocked nose, sneezing, coughing, red sore watery eyes and then it generally turns into a rash. So that can start with spots in the mouth and then a rash on the face which spreads across the rest of the body.
Andrew: And how can parents protect their children against measles?
Rebecca: So obviously vaccination is the first point of call so you can reduce your child’s chance of getting measles.
But if your child does have measles, you should go to your GP surgery. It usually does start to improve and symptoms start to improve within about a week.
And during that contagious period you should try and obviously avoid contact with others. It does help to have plenty of rest, drink plenty of water, take pain relief and try not to sort of pick or irritate the rash at all.
Andrew: Is there any simple steps people can take?
Rebecca: Yes, there are. So people can make sure that they’re washing their hands with soap and water which we should be doing anyway, utilizing tissues – what we call respiratory etiquette or coughing and sneezing away from others – and making sure that you’re throwing your tissues away so they catch it and bin it.
Andrew: Now one of the problems with the increase in measles is is the MMR vaccine safe?
Rebecca: Yeah the MMR vaccine is absolutely safe. I know there was some concerns around this years ago but it is proven to be very effective and safe for people to have.
Andrew: Where can people find out more information and advice?
Rebecca: So you can find the advice on the NHS website where they’ll be quite easy to follow advice just by Googling NHS measles.
Andrew: Thank you, Rebecca.
Outro: Thank you for joining us. Until next time. You’ve been listening to NTH Voices.
Episode 10 – Giving back to our communities this Christmas
Each year we organise a food and toy drive to give back to our community over Christmas.
In this episode of NTH Voices, communications, engagement and marketing manager Mark Malik talks about why this is so important to our Trust and how staff can get involved if they would like.
Episode 10 – Giving back to our communities this Christmas
Intro: Welcome to North Tees and Hartlepool voices, telling the stories of our people and community in our Trust.
Elliot: Hello, my name is Elliot Kennedy. With me in studio this morning we have Mark Malik from communications, engagement and marketing team. Good morning, Mark.
Mark: Morning, thanks for having me today.
Elliot: Today we’re talking about giving for Christmas.
Mark: Yes, absolutely.
Elliot: Who will we collecting for?
Mark: Well basically we’re asking staff, if they’re able to do so, to collect food, toys, gifts and wrapping paper for some of our local partners.
So the food will be going to the food banks in Stockton and Hartlepool which will be supporting some people with extra food and treats over the Christmas period. And toys, gifts and wrapping paper going to our partners over at the Salvation Army in Stockton and Hartlepool as well to help some people enjoy Christmas a little bit more.
Elliot: And why are we collecting these items?
Mark: Well basically, it’s a sad fact that our region experiences some of the worst poverty and financial disadvantage in the entire country. So this collection is about some of our local families, some of whom are in you know very, very dire financial situations, to just have a nice Christmas and enjoy themselves a little bit more, try and ease a little bit of that pressure.
Elliot: It’s a nice idea but some of our own staff may also be finding a hard times this year.
Mark: Absolutely. We wouldn’t want anyone to feel pressured into donating. What we ask is only to donate anything if you can afford to do so. But, you know, every penny counts so even if a couple of colleagues could club together and get something small, that would be appreciated too.
Most supermarkets have, you know, very reasonably priced own brand goods – tins of peas, sweetcorn, things like that that can go on their meal. Or even gifts that start from just a couple of pounds.
But, again, absolutely only if you can afford it.
Elliot: Are we appealing to members of the public as well?
Mark: Not really, no. This is a staff only appeal but if you’ve got a family member who wants to join in they can give you something to bring in yourself or give you some money. My dad always gives me a few quid and he’s quite surprised how far we can stretch it.
So what we’re looking for is tins of vegetables, gravy granules, packets of stuffing mix, store bought Christmas cakes, Christmas puddings, toys, games, things for older teenagers – they often struggle with older gifts for them. Men’s toiletry sets – Salvation Army struggles with that. Lots of people don’t think that men require things like that as well so anything that people can give would be great and if families want to join in and help as well that’s absolutely fantastic too.
Elliot: Now, more importantly, where can staff drop these items off?
Mark: Best thing to do would be for staff to check their emails where we have sent messages around.
But if I can quickly recap them, up in Hartlepool we’ve got ward two on the first floor, the specialist services admin hub, the outpatient staff room, Amanda McNeany on the fourth floor kindly uses her office as a dropoff base, and the chemotherapy ward as well.
And over at North Tees, Tatchell Centre reception, the pathology staff room, the third floor of the tower block, the fifth floor of the tower block and the seventh floor of the tower block – that’s the directorate offices. They will all take gifts and donations there. The main office of the X-ray service, the undergraduate department in the south wing, NTH Solutions office which is near the Tees Restaurant entrance and our own office communications, engagement marketing office on the fourth floor of the north wing.
So we’re spread about the Trust. Wherever people are, they’re not too far from a drop off point. And then our brilliant volunteers collect them once a week, gather them all together and take them off to the food banks and Salvation Army.
I know the stuff that me and my dad have done has already gone so it’s already on its way, it’s already moving well.
Elliot: Well thank you, Mark.
Mark: Thank you very much.
Outro: Thank you for joining us. Until next time. You’ve been listening to NTH Voices.
Episode 9 – Introducing InPhase
Over the coming weeks and months, we are introducing InPhase into our Trust – a new hospital events reporting system which will replace Datix.
In the latest episode of NTH Voices, chief nurse Lindsey Robertson gives an overview of how we are rolling this out with staff, how to get involved and what you can expect.
Episode 9 – Introducing InPhase
Intro: Welcome to North Tees and Hartlepool voices, telling the stories of our people and community in our Trust.
Elliot: My name’s Elliot Kennedy and today we go behind the scenes with…
Lindsey: Lindsey Robertson, chief nurse, hello.
Elliot: Hello there. Why are we moving away from Datix?
Lindsey: We’re moving to a more flexible system so that’s the first thing. Datix has stayed fairly static and it hasn’t really kept up with the national direction of travel.
The bigger context of this really is how we capture events that happen across the organisation. So we used to call them incidents but now we call them events and it’s all in line with the national patient safety strategy.
So we want to make it really, really easy for all of our staff to capture events where things might go well and things might not go so well so that we ensure that we learn and we improve. And that’s really the basis of why we’re changing our system.
InPhase is really flexible. Most young people or most people across the organisation now have apps on their phone, we we’re used to that, so this is an app based system that sits in the cloud, uh wherever that is, and they can access those apps on any device that they’ve got. So they’re not restricted to any of the computers that we’ve had previously.
So it’s much more flexible and easier so when staff feel that there’s something they want to share with us from a patient safety perspective or improving quality then they can do it really easily.
Elliot: So how long will it take to learn and embed?
Lindsey: So we’ve been learning for a little while. So there’s a core team of us that have been doing this and driving it forward. There’s quite a number of staff already being trained but, with anything, I think it’s once we start to roll it out and we use it and we test it and it’ll evolve.
So certainly the first phase of roll out will be for our events which our staff will understand as Datix incidents, how they report, so we’ll call them events and that’ll be the first app to roll out in December. So there’s lots of training around that and then we’ll follow on with complaints and compliments and risk. So we’re moving that as a rolling programme.
Elliot: So what’s the main advantages of implementation of InPhase?
Lindsey: I think I’ve probably said a bit of that in a very hurried way.
So I think the main advantage is that it is really accessible. I think previously there’s only been one system, people have to sit down, they have to get to a desktop computer. This means that they can do it from their phone. It’s really easy like anything, like if you were buying something on your phone.
It’s very easy to access as it’s a cloud-based system so any piece of technology they can do and if people can’t get to the technology can support them with some paper if they need to do that.
Elliot: We have clear points and contact support and training and advice?
Lindsey: Yeah, we’ve got what we would call super users. We’re going to have those across all the departments, we’re going to make it really easy for those staff who are front line so they can go and get some support from the teams understanding it and rolling it out, but not just around training that they have to access online but we’ll be there walking the walk with them so that we can really get underneath it and support any of those things that we probably haven’t predicted but we can do it the time.
Elliot: So the roll out plan will be phased?
Lindsey: Yeah.
Elliot: How do you plan for that?
Lindsey: We’ve already got that happening so we’ve done quite a lot of training now. I think there’s been circa 130 people trained on some of the app based stuff, already got a dedicated team.
We’re going to have computers and any technology set up in the back of the restaurant but we’ll be walking the floor so when we roll it out we’ll go to the areas where people are using it and we’ll be with them on site.
Elliot: And the planned roll out is to end in March? Yeah. This year Datix will go at the end of December so we’re on a tight deadline. People have been working really hard to make sure that we get those first apps in use and then we’ll have it all in place by the end of March.
Elliot: Okay, thank you.
Lindsey: Thank you.
Outro: Thank you for joining us. Until next time. You’ve been listening to NTH Voices.
Episode 8 – Relaunching our communications, engagement and marketing service
Our communications, engagement and marketing team support services right across our hospitals and community bases.
In the latest episode of NTH Voices, Ruth Dalton, deputy director of communications, engagement and marketing, discusses how the team works with NHS staff and journalists, and how they’re evolving support based on staff feedback.
To get in touch with the team, email [email protected]
Episode 8 – Relaunching our communications, engagement and marketing service
Intro: Welcome to North Tees and Hartlepool voices, telling the stories of our people and community in our Trust.
Elliot: I’m Elliot Kennedy and today we go behind the scenes with Ruth Dalton, deputy director of communications, engagement and marketing. Why are you doing a relaunch of communications, engagement and marketing?
Ruth: Okay, it’s a really good question. The communication service within our Trust has been here for a number of years now. People across the organisation will link it with Anthem and newsletter as well as messages about updates and events.
But back in 2018 there was a directive to change how we deliver our service and what it should look like moving forward. And after a lot of reshaping and restructuring – some bad, some terrible in fact and some good – we’ve arrived where we are today and we want to talk about how we now work and what you can expect from us in terms of support.
Elliot: So what can we expect to see and how we got to this point?
Ruth: Well hopefully most people across the organisation will have had some link at some point with our team. That might be reading a health and wellbeing magazine, following us on social media or you might have shared a good news story or two for our website.
But we deliver a lot more than that and we wanted to test if we were getting it right or completely missing the mark. So back in October, we issued a brief survey and invited staff to respectfully give their thoughts on our service. It’s all subjective of course and working in PR and communications you become exceptionally thick skinned.
The feedback leaned the majority of the way to a positive view of the service. Staff suggested that there were lots of platforms and channels for them to receive Trust news but they also gave us some really candid feedback about what else they wanted. They want more face-to-face communications, our community staff want more involvement and inclusion and boy do they love a screen saver.
Our job now is to translate that feedback into a service befitting of the Trust and in shaping that we want to talk a little bit more about some of the other work that we deliver.
Elliot: So beyond the bulletins and the newsletters what else is the team going to do?
Ruth: Well we look after our website – we built our new version earlier this year. We work with our external stakeholders to ensure that they know what’s happening in the Trust and how they can use their voices to help us – our political partners and our local authorities, for example.
We work with the local regional or national media, we try exceptionally hard to ensure that we get as much positive coverage as possible, and we’re really proud of that, but we also work to support maintaining a good reputation for this organisation, our group and the wider NHS. That’s some of the more challenging aspects of our work really.
Most of our media partners are great, they’re not all journalist of days gone by but some are still looking for sensationalist headlines and a scoop if you will. And if you sit within earshot of my office, you’ll hear the rows and challenges made of some of our colleagues on a day-to-day basis.
I’ll give you one little snippet insight to something that happened during the pandemic. One of our local newspapers printed a headline without any consultation with us about how Covid had hit the University Hospital of Hartlepool. People remember at that time that that wasn’t the situation, that Hartlepool was kept for our elective work and making sure that it was a green site essentially. There were a lot of rows that day with the local editor of that newspaper to pull the headline, which happened.
So there’s a lot of that negotiation goes on behind the scenes, some stuff that doesn’t get to press perhaps where it would have if our team weren’t in place often happens. So we deal all sorts with all sorts of crisis communication, celebratory communications, sometimes straightforward fact giving communications.
We also now look after engagement and that’s a learning curve. Pleasing 6,000 staff is no easy task but we keep going.
Elliot:
Ruth: So what’s happening next? So next we’re looking to share more of our ambitions and our service into the teams that feel they might benefit from our work. So if you’ve got something you want to share, get in touch, we can give you platforms internally and externally. If you need support with a challenging media issue give us a call.
We look after identity and voice – ensuring that we make North Tees and Hartlepool stories heard. We deliver difficult messages at times and they can be really hard to land but we try to do it with respect. We’ll be sharing more of our plans in the coming days and weeks and we would love colleagues from the Trust to get involved.
Elliot: Thank you Ruth.
Ruth: Thank you Elliot.
Elliot: Bye bye.
Outro: Thank you for joining us. Until next time. You’ve been listening to NTH Voices.
Episode 7 – Welcome to our financial health and wellbeing events
This year we are once again welcoming in local public sector and private companies to offer staff money saving advice and exclusive offers as our financial health and wellbeing marketplace event returns.
In this episode of NTH Voices, chief people officer Susy Cook and deputy director of communications, engagement and marketing discuss our reasons for putting on this event and what our staff will be able to find on the days.
Episode 7 – Welcome to our financial health and wellbeing events
Intro: Welcome to North Tees and Hartlepool voices, telling the stories of our people and community in our Trust.
Elliot: You’re listening to Radio Stitch, serving the patients, staff and visitors at the university hospitals in the North East. Today we have Ruth Dalton and Susy Cook.
Ruth: Good morning.
Susy: Good morning, Elliot.
Elliot: Good morning. What are these events and financial health and wellbeing and how do they come about?
Susy: So the events are really exciting events with the help of Ruth, our communications and engagement lead. They came about because when we started to really understand what people meant by health and wellbeing.
We decided to run a survey with the support of Ruth and her team to understand what people really wanted to help them around health and wellbeing. So we ran a reward and recognition survey to understand, in the guise of reward and recognition, what people wanted to know more about, where they wanted help, what would really help them in their work and daily living.
And one of the things that came out was support around financial health and wellbeing and therefore that was the start of these events.
Elliot: Why should staff attend and what can they expect to experience?
Ruth: Okay, so Elliot, this is the second year we’ve run these events so hopefully staff will remember their success last year. So we work with a number of internal departments as well as lots of external partners as well.
So we’ve got people from the welfare team at Stockton Borough Council, and Hartlepool Carers who can support families who need support there. We’ve got commercial enterprises coming in, Kwik Fit onsite on the day offering free winter checks for our staff so make sure you register for that.
It’s a real host of different organisations and departments that can offer different levels of support, advice and guidance.
Elliot: And what type of organisations will be there?
Ruth: So, as I said, we’ve got Stockton Borough Council health and welfare, we’ve got education teams. We’ve got the ARC in Stockton so if staff already don’t know this we get a 10% discount on all of their gig tickets, we work really closely with those guys.
We’ve got some health and beauty people coming along, we have food banks coming along in respect of can we work to support those guys as well, we know we work really actively with those guys.
Lots of different organisations internally. We’ve got our smoking cessation team coming along who I am assured are bringing along some really exciting new vapes for people to look at.
So lots of different ways that people can look at different aspects of their life to address any kind of financial health and wellbeing imbalances really.
Elliot: Are these events part of a wider ambition for health and wellbeing for the Trust?
Susy: They absolutely are. So we’ve done a full review of our health and wellbeing offer for the organisation and really focused on what can we do to provide a service that helps people on a number of levels.
So we’ve reviewed our occupational health team we’ve got Helen Waller now. A big plug for Helen, our health and wellbeing care coordinator, who’s out there on a regular basis linking in with our staff and supporting.
We’ve got the health and wellbeing magazine that Ruth here supports us with that promotes and shares ideas and information around health and wellbeing. We’ve got our occupational health team, who are fantastic, that support our staff out there around all things health.
We’ve also got, remember, for everybody the flu vaccination. Please get your flu jabs and the Covid vaccination because, you know, it’s really important not only to protect yourselves but to protect our patients.
So yes, whilst the festival of financial health and wellbeing is really important in terms of finance support, we do have a bigger ambition for health and wellbeing and we will continue to review our health and wellbeing offer.
Elliot: Now, what are the dates for these events?
Ruth: They are happening on the 29th and 30th of November at Hartlepool and Stockton respectively.
Elliot: And what time are they? All day?
Ruth: They are running from half 11 until 1. So when we worked with colleagues last year, these were the best times for people to drop in and out as they’re grabbing sandwiches or having their lunch. And happy to sort of feedback from staff after that as well.
Elliot: And it’s an open door?
Ruth: Open door. So at North Tees it will be in the back of the restaurant, literally in the back of the restaurant not the Tees meeting room on the outside. And Hartlepool in the main foyer there so you won’t be able to miss us.
Elliot: Ruth, Susy, thank you.
Ruth: Thank you.
Susy: Thank you, Elliot.
Outro: Thank you for joining us. Until next time. You’ve been listening to NTH Voices.
Episode 6 – Developing our group model
James Bromiley, associate director of group development, works across both North Tees and Hartlepool NHS Foundation Trust and South Tees Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. He leads on collaboration between the two NHS trusts.
Here he discusses recent developments and how our working group model this will look in the future.
Episode 6 – Developing our group model
Intro: Welcome to North Tees and Hartlepool voices, telling the stories of our people and community in our Trust.
Elliot: I’m Elliot Kennedy and I’m going behind the scenes. Today we have James Bromiley. Good morning James.
James: Good morning, Elliot.
Elliot: What’s your role?
James: So my role, Elliot, I’m the associate director of group development and I work across North Tees and Hartlepool and South Tees trusts on group development which is the way in which the two trusts work together collaboratively across the range of services.
Elliot: And tell us about the group and what’s the model that North Tees and South Tees are going to use?
James: Yeah, so it’s clearly not new for North Tees and South Tees to work together. That’s been going on for years and years across a range of services. The group model is really a description for how we take this forward with more pace and across a greater range of services over the next few years.
The trusts stay as autonomous trusts. North Tees and Hartlepool and South Tees remain as organisations but it’s an equal partnership.
It’s describing how we work collaboratively for the benefit of patients, for the benefit of staff, for the benefit of the population really, to make the strategic decisions at a group level.
The idea of group model really is something that’s going to be more common across the country. So there are group models for example in Barts, in London, in Manchester, in Northamptonshire, and what we’re trying to do is to take the benefits of those group models which already exist but then put them into a way in which really works for our own circumstances and our own population.
Elliot: And what does that mean for staff and others within the trusts?
James: The benefit of the group model is we get the scale of working together across the two trusts but we keep that local identity and we keep that those local links and access to services.
So I think for patients, you can see benefits in terms of making sure that we get exactly the same level of care across the two trusts. For example, if you have to go from one hospital to another through your period of care that should be made much more easy for you.
I think, for staff there are huge benefits as well so you could form a career path much more easily across North Tees and South Tees.
And for clinicians working across the two sites through for example having the same digital platform or a digital platform which at least talks to each other will be much more straightforward. So for staff it’ll be much more easy.
And then the third thing really is around the voice that we’ll be a much bigger group than two individual organisations and so we’ll have a stronger voice. We’ll be able to respond much more clearly to the needs of the population and we’ll have a stronger voice regionally and nationally in terms of how we argue for our population’s needs.
Elliot: And I understand there’s going to be a partnership agreement?
James: Yeah, the partnership agreement is really something I’ve been living and breathing, Elliot, since I’ve been in this role at the start of August. What it is it’s a formal agreement for how this group model will work across North Tees and Hartlepool and South Tees. And also the ICB, the NHS for North East and North Cumbria, will also be a signatory to this.
What it does is it sets out how this group model is going to operate so it sets out the context, the population needs that we’re trying to meet and the benefits of working collaboratively. It sets out governance, how we’re going to take joint decisions and how we’re going to have a joint leadership structure. It sets out a road map for how we’re going to get there.
The most important part of the partnership agreement is describing how we’re going to change things and migrate things clinically to join those clinical services together. And to set a series of priorities which will be really the heart of what this collaboration will be to enable those services to really serve the population much more effectively than they currently do by working collaboratively.
And clearly clinicians have been at the very forefront of designing what those should be and it also sets out what we’re calling the enabling strategies but that’s really the support – so how do we support that clinical change in terms of digital strategy, in terms of HR strategy, in terms of finance strategy as well.
Elliot: And the aim is to achieve this by when?
James: Well it’s going to take a long time to do this really properly but we’re making this change now through the partnership agreement to really accelerate the collaboration that we’re doing.
The aim will be to have the group set up and running by quarter one of 24/25. so in that April to June period. But that won’t be the finished article. The partnership agreement is very much a live document. It’s a living document and the group model will be a living entity. It’s going to change and migrate and evolve as we come across new things and new opportunities.
So I don’t think there is a finishing point to be honest.
I think it’s really important that we indicate that we’re doing this at pace, but of course we’ve also got to make sure that we maintain the stability of services in both of the trusts. What we don’t want to do is create change which is destabilising. It’s about the balance between clear step change but also making sure that we maintain that stability of services.
And I have to say, and this gets very boring for people who talk to me, but I really love this role. I think it’s fantastic. I feel like this is the opportunity to make this work after lots of attempts at collaboration over the previous years.
This is the opportunity that we’ve got to make things really work for our staff our patients and the population of the Tees Valley and beyond.
Elliot: Thank you James.
James: Thank you, take care.
Elliot: That was James Bromiley, the associate director of group development here within North Tees.
Outro: Thank you for joining us. Until next time. You’ve been listening to NTH Voices.
Episode 5 – Launching our faculty of leadership, learning and improvement
This episode of NTH Voices sees conversation around the launch of our new faculty of leadership, learning and improvement.
Chief people officer Susy Cook and group chair Derek Bell discuss what the faculty is, how it will support our current and future workforce, and how everyone can get involved.
NTH Voices episode 5
Intro: Welcome to North Tees and Hartlepool voices, telling the stories of our people and community in our Trust.
Elliot: You’re listening to Radio Stitch serving the patients, staff and visitors of the University Hospitals in the North East and today we’re behind the scenes with Susy Cook and Derek Bell, hello.
Susy: Hi, I’m Susy Cook, chief people officer and director of corporate affairs here at North Tees and Hartlepool hospitals.
Derek: And I’m Derek Bell, the joint chair of North Tees and Hartlepool hospitals and South Tees Hospitals Foundation trusts.
Elliot: Well we know what your roles are but what are we here to talk about today?
Susy: So we’re here today to talk about the faculty of leadership, learning and improvement. The aim of the faculty is to take us one step further in bringing together our leadership and learning offer for the organisation and to support our staff in their development which is really crucial as they move on their journey.
We also want to think more widely about how we attract people who may not have even thought about coming to the organisation and having a career in the NHS and it will be an enabler to drive transformation forward and use some of our improvement methodologies as we move towards our group model.
Derek: And just picking up on what Susy was saying there, it’s important that the faculty itself will align with colleagues at South Tees through STRIVE which is achieving similar things in recent months and that will help both organisations work together for the benefits of the local population and also the staff in terms of their learning.
Elliot: What has the faculty already achieved and what are the future ambitions for it?
Susy: So the faculty’s already achieved significant things. We had the NTH100 programme that’s ran, we’ve got our medical education offer, our apprenticeships offer.
But in recent months we’ve reviewed all our leadership offer, creating a new suite of programmes to support all staff at all levels, including the very first programme which is ‘It All Starts with Me’ which is a leadership development programme for everybody within the organisation. And our online learning support for staff to allow them to start to understand and work in terms of leadership training and leadership development.
We’re currently working with our medical colleagues in reviewing leadership development and how we support them and we’ve also reviewed our improvement delivery model which is supported by our medical lead Gill Davidson who does significant training around the QSIR initiative which is an improvement method to help everybody improve their day-to-day working.
Derek: We’re also at an important point in time with the launch of our Health and Social Care Academy. This is supported by Hartlepool Council and Hartlepool College of Further Education working with the Trust through the towns deal. This is to create a new environment to attract people to learn and work with us at all levels of the organisation and create opportunities for the future for all staff and for the population.
The academy will actually importantly include a state-of-the-art simulation facility based at the University Hospital of Hartlepool, offering our local partners and organisations access to these state-of-the-art facilities.
Elliot: Do you have any events arranged where staff can find out more about this?
Susy: We certainly do. We’ve just ran a really successful event at Hartlepool Hospital a week ago which allowed everybody to turn up and get a sample of some of the facilities that we’re going to have and have a taster of some of the development opportunities and this Thursday we have another event here at North Tees Hospital.
It will be back of the staff restaurant for people to come along in a very non-formal environment and have a taste of what’s available to them within the faculty – no matter what their role is, no matter where they are within the organisation – and allow them to have some open and honest conversations about what they’d like to do with their future careers.
Derek: I, along with the other non-executive directors, will be attending. We’re very keen to support this exciting agenda and we’re looking forward to meeting staff and seeing them on the day.
Elliot: Now any last messages for the staff?
Susy: Yes. To all the staff members out there, please do come along to the event if you can. If you can’t, ask your colleagues to come.
Keep your eyes on the development of the faculty as we move forward. And as Derek rightly says there the launch of the academy and the simulation suite – there’s some exciting times ahead. We’re going to be running a suite of programmes where we have speakers join us from external organisations.
There’s some exciting news to come.
Derek: I mean, this is importantly about how we value staff and if we want to encourage people at all levels in the organisation to come along and take the time to learn and work with us with these development opportunities so we’re looking forward to a very exciting day but importantly continuing that relationship in future months and years.
Elliot: Susy, Derek, thank you.
Susy and Derek: Thank you.
Outro: Thank you for joining us. Until next time. You’ve been listening to NTH Voices.
Episode 4 – The mortuary is not how you see it on TV
In this episode of NTH Voices, we go behind the scenes of our mortuary where our patients are cared for after death.
Mortuary assistant Sara Hutchinson talks through what her role involves, how the team after patients at their most vulnerable and what they do to support their loved ones throughout the process.
Episode 4 – The mortuary is not how you see it on TV
Intro: Welcome to North Tees and Hartlepool voices, telling the stories of our people and community in our Trust.
Elliot: I’m Elliot Kennedy and we go behind the scenes today with Sara Hutchinson.
Sara: Hi.
Elliot: Hello, Sarah, what’s your job?
Sara: I am a mortuary assistant. I’m one of a small team of people who work within our mortuaries taking care of deceased patients just like the live ones. We maintain patient dignity and respect at all times, check identification, property, ensure patient paperwork is completed and just make sure the patient remains safe and cared for whilst they’re in our care.
Elliot: And what does a typical day look like? First thing on a morning when we arrive at work, we check our patients that have been admitted overnight and then we admit them onto our electronic mortuary register. We obviously check their identification, any property, clothing record any implanted devices like pacemakers.
We then change sheets and clothing if they become soiled for any reason. We then liaise with our bereavement services to ensure they are aware of our new admissions.
Most of the rest of our day’s split between cleaning the mortuary, assisting the funeral directors when they come to collect their patients and just helping families who come to visit their loved ones throughout the day.
Elliot: And do you deal with all patients that come down?
Sara: Yes, we deal with children, babies and adults, early pregnancies all the way through to a patient aged of 102 is actually the eldest that I can remember we’ve dealt with.
Myself and the team, along with bereavement services, do support mums and families and they’re able to come in and visit and hold their babies in our care. With baby loss awareness week recently I think it’s really important to speak about baby loss and make people aware that we have facilities to help support the bereavement process.
We can also help with funeral advice. While we always remain professional, we are that empathetic ear and at times that shoulder to cry on.
Elliot: And what’s your favourite part of your job?
Sara: My favourite part of the job is helping with the families. Quite often people have misconceptions of how their loved ones will look or how the mortuary will look. It’s very rewarding when someone comes to visit at the mortuary and they thank us for making their loved ones look so well and just showing how nice a place their loved one is staying.
We always treat our patients as if they are our own family and I think how we would like our loved ones to be treated. Some staff have had family come through our mortuary and it’s nice to know that they’ve been given the best possible care.
I also like when families share stories of their loved ones. Sometimes it just describes how they used to be. It helps us to feel connected to our patients as human beings and know that they were loved and cared for.
Elliot: What advice would you give or something you would like the living to know about the mortuary?
Sara: Just that the mortuary is not how you see it on TV. It’s a professional environment, it’s just like a ward for the deceased really.
If someone has any concerns, needs advice or assistance in regards to death of a loved one or patient just contact us as the bereavement team are very knowledgeable and experienced and can help advise, guide or signpost you to the information you require.
Elliot: And lastly, what would you say to someone who was wanting to work with the deceased?
Sara: Why not? It’s very rewarding. You get to look after families and deceased patients when they’re at their most vulnerable. I enjoy it and I get to work with some amazing people in the team.
If you like to deliver excellent patient care then the mortuary is the place for you.
Elliot: Well thank you, Sara. That’s Sara Hutchinson who’s a mortuary assistant.
Outro: Thank you for joining us. Until next time. You’ve been listening to NTH Voices.
Episode 3 – Making every contact count
Making Every Contact Count (MECC) is an approach to behaviour change that uses the day-to-day interactions that health and social care staff have with people to support them in making positive changes to their physical and mental health and wellbeing.
In this episode of NTH Voices, MECC lead Kath Tarn talks through how it can improve health and wellbeing, what patients can expect from these conversations and how our staff can support.
Episode 3 – Making every contact count
Intro: Welcome to North Tees and Hartlepool voices, telling the stories of our people and community in our Trust.
Andrew: Hi welcome to radio stitch. In the studios today I’ve got Kath from make every contact count and she’s going to tell us and give us some awareness of what it actually means. Hi Kath.
Kath: Hi Andrew. Hi I’m Kath Tarn, I lead on making every contact count here at North Tees and Hartlepool NHS Foundation Trust.
Andrew: Hi Kath, so tell us what is make every contact count?
Kath: So making every contact count is an approach to behaviour change. So it’s about using the interactions that we have with people every day in healthcare and communities and with our families as well to have a conversation that will make a difference and influence someone to choose a healthier behaviour.
Andrew: So is that like, I don’t know, say a patient that comes in and they don’t know what the options are and they don’t know who to contact is that where you say make every contact counts does that.
Sort of say right, okay, then we can point you in the right direction. These are the people that can help you and then obviously you’ll send them there or whatever, point them there and if they make that contact that’s basically what it’s saying isn’t it? Make that contact which is going to make your life a lot easier and better in the future.
Kath: Yeah, so our ask of patients is to expect a conversation about health and wellbeing. Then when they come to our hospitals we want to know about your health and wellbeing. We are interested and we want to signpost you to be able to change behaviours that are important to you.
So to support us to help do that we’ve got a MECC gateway which is a a website which has all the services that are available in our region. So for our Hartlepool patients. Stockton patients, Peterlee patients. And patients can access this website for different parts of wellbeing.
So the core elements of MECC, to name just a few, are to improve physical activity, to support with mental health, to reduce smoking, to promote healthy weight, reduce alcohol but there’s many many other options on there where I’m making every contact count.
Andrew: What’s the website address?
Kath: The website address is www.meccgateway.co.uk/nenc
Andrew: So anybody who wants to look at that can actually join onto it and look on the website and they can actually access all those positions that you’ve just mentioned and everything else rather, smoking or and give contact to yourselves? Would a member of the team actually contact them after that or?
Kath: The gateway works as a resource so that there’s contact information on each page that might be relevant to that person. So if the person wants to stop smoking, the website has information on there that helps someone to do that, whether that’s a national initiative or something local to us. And we’ll have contact information on there.
The gateway is what it says, it’s a gateway to other services.
Andrew: Yeah, so basically you’re just opening the gate and it’s widening your world as such?
Kath: Yeah.
Andrew: Especially on the worldwide web as they say, which is great and like I said moving forward with MECC and things like that where do you see that the future is with it? How do you think it’s going to progress and get bigger and bigger? Is that only with the interaction of other people and staff and obviously patients that are out there?
Kath: Yes, so MECC is for everybody and we recognise that our population, particularly in Hartlepool and Stockton, we have higher prevalence of people who smoke, who have obesity, we have higher prevalence of physical inactivity and alcohol admissions to hospital.
Andrew: Yeah, I remember talking to other members of staff and especially the alcohol awareness team and things like that. Covid had a lot to do with it because obviously people were stuck at home and it was just easy to go around the off license or the supermarket and get 24 cans of lager or these shops that are open 24 hours.
And obviously when you’re bored and people who were smoking smoke more as well because they just sat at home so yes, and eating more. So yeah, you’re covering every boundary as such and hopefully obviously making people more aware of this and making them healthy as well while doing it which is great.
Kath: So MECC is one of our key priorities as a Trust as part of our health and wellbeing strategy. And we’re on a journey to challenge culture through a change programme to become a healthy hospital.
So we have support from the regional team across North East and North Cumbria and North Tees and Hartlepool are a leading Trust in the implementation of MECC across the region so we have support from staff to act as role models to have healthy conversations with each other and with family and to have healthy conversations with patients where the possibilities lie.
MECC isn’t about taking up clinical time that should be invested in a clinical decision, it’s about taking an opportunity for a brief or very brief intervention that could signpost someone to a better life.
Andrew: So basically a member of staff who’s got a member of their own family or anything like that can just sort of say look have a go, get on to that website, it’ll open your eyes to a lot of things and where to go to gain help for the wellbeing of themselves basically?
Kath: Yeah and it doesn’t just stop with the website, it also is about who you know and what you know. So if you know that there’s somebody who’s managed to have a successful behaviour change in their life, do you think they could influence somebody? Then someone to have a conversation with that person might be useful.
And it’s also about knowing what’s available in the community outside of the gateway as well and acting as community connectors to influence our population.
Andrew: Yeah the way I see it, it’s a lot to do with support as well and that’s what’s needed, it’s good having that contact, it’s having the support with it and having a team like yourselves that’s there willing to give that support to staff, patients, anybody that’s out there – friends, neighbours, whatever.
They always say if you know somebody who’s lonely just give them a call, it will boost them up and that’s having that contact, it’s knowing somebody that’s out there and knowing somebody. Okay, Audrey next door, I’ll give her a knock and go in and have a cup of tea or whatever else. Again it’s all contact isn’t it? Yeah. And that’s what you are doing, which is great.
Kath: And I think at that level as well, Andrew, there’s also great importance on partnership working because we know there’s health inequalities in our communities, we know that people don’t have the same opportunities and it’s not just as easy as asking somebody to be more physically active.
There might be other reasons why they aren’t and we want to adopt a personalised care approach to our interactions and our interventions so that we find out what matters most to people.
We work at a system level to understand our population, understand what the barriers are to achieving health and healthy lifestyle and we are able to provide opportunities, work with local authorities, work with our voluntary sector to provide opportunities that mean something to the people of Hartlepool and Stockton.
Andrew: That is absolutely fantastic and I’d like to thank you for coming into the studios today to have a chat with us and things like that and hopefully we can progress this and give you some awareness, like I said Radio Stitch is out there broadcasting throughout North Tees and Hartlepool we’re even on the TVs and hopefully going over with James Cook very shortly.
Thank you very much, Kath, for coming down and seeing us and if we can help you in any way in the future please do. Just give us a refresh on the website and how people can get in with you.
Kath: Yes so making every contact count – the website is www.meccgateway.co.uk/nenc
And my final ask of Andrew today is what opportunity do you have, Andrew, to make every contact count today?
Andrew: Well in the Radio Stitch network, we have a lot of contacts out there in the communities. Like I said now we’re reaching out to other hospitals, other community sectors like Peterlee, Lawson Street and things like that.
Plus I have a lot of contacts from my industry over the last 30 years of being in the hospitality trade and things like that. And again now I have the time to sit down and think about people, I will definitely be making that contact count. So yeah we’ll push forward and we’ll give you some backing and we’ll get you some awareness out there and hopefully we can grow this for you.
Thank you very much for coming in, Kath, and don’t forget make every contact count.
Kath: Thank you, Andrew.
Outro: Thank you for joining us. Until next time. You’ve been listening to NTH Voices.
Episode 2 – Meet our alcohol care team
One year on since our alcohol care team was formed, we chat with alcohol lead nurse Hayley Douglas about how the team support our patients and their ambitions going forward.
Episode 2 – Meet our alcohol care team
Intro: Welcome to North Tees and Hartlepool Voices, telling the stories of our people and community in our Trust.
John: So hi and welcome to NTH voices, our new podcast. I’m John Hugill from the communications and marketing team. I’m joined by Hayley Douglas, our alcohol lead nurse.
Hayley: Hi.
John: How you doing today?
Hayley: Good, yeah, are you?
John: Excellent, yes, very well thanks. So I’ve just got a few questions to ask you so can you tell me first of all a bit about your role and the role of the wider alcohol care team?
Hayley: Yes so the alcohol care team is made up of myself and another registered nurse. We have three band four associate practitioners. We see patients all across the hospital from A&E to patients that are waiting for operations if they need any support with their alcohol withdrawal management when they’re in hospital.
We’ve been around since July. I’ve been around since April last year but we’ve actually only been live since July and the team’s just been coming in slowly throughout the year. We’re fully staffed now and we’re fully operational so we do Monday and Friday 8 till 6. And weekend and bank holidays we do 8 till 4.
John: So like you say the team was set up in in July, so it’s nearly coming up to a year now. So what would you say have been the main challenges and achievements over that time?
Hayley: I think we’re still embedding in the Trust really. I think not all the staff know that we’re here so hopefully doing this will help. So yeah we’re not getting a true picture of how many of our patients are coming through the hospital doors who actually have an issue with alcohol.
The government recommends that you don’t drink any more than 14 units a week so everybody really should be screened for that when they’re coming into hospital and patients aren’t. So it’s kind of our job to embed that into the Trust but that’s an ongoing piece of work really. So yeah we’re catching as many patients as we can but there is still quite a lot of patients that we aren’t getting hold of.
John: So as we know Teesside has some of the highest rates of alcohol related deaths in the country, with Hartlepool being the third highest I believe. Why do you think this is and what challenges does this represent to the team and to those people affected?
Hayley: I think the pandemic has got a lot to answer for. We are still not seeing the full aftermath of that, like the sales of spirits and wine was up by millions. So I think all these patients are now starting to filter through.
We’re even seeing patients that have never been to a GP for 10 plus years and they’re coming into the hospital with like end stage liver disease and I think the fact that they have been in their house for years and done nothing but drink alcohol has massively impacted on that like on the whole population really.
And then, in turn, is loneliness which leads to mental health problems.
John: Quite a multi-layered thing, lots of different reasons I suppose why someone might get to the point where they come into hospital with an alcohol problem.
Hayley: Yeah, I mean like even falls. You know if you’re at home, you have you’ve had too much to drink and you have a fall and then they’ve had a long lie we’re seeing lots of those patients. A lot of our patients come in with chest pain as well in regards to what’s going on like with the community and how we’re working.
So Stockton and Hartlepool have both just – both councils have just written a report on their drug and alcohol needs assessments which we are being part of as well in regards to writing out the recommendations for that.
It’s quite interesting actually when you look at the map on Hartlepool, there’s like specific areas where the hot spots are. And those hot spots tend to be the more deprived areas. They tend to be the areas that have more, you know, your 24 hour places where you can get alcohol 24 hours a day basically. So they’re going to look at things like not being able to get more licensing in them areas.
John: So how do you think that will help then with licensing?
Hayley: If we do make those changes and find those patterns where in those areas – interestingly Scotland actually have done something very similar to what we’re proposing in our area. They’ve even put, you know, on your bus stops and things like that the posters about like not drinking too much. I’m sure a lot of the places in Glasgow they stop selling alcohol at 10 and they’ve seen a massive reduction in their alcohol related hospital admissions.
So that would be amazing if we could do something similar in our area. It’s getting all that pushed through though but that’s working with our community partners to do that. It sounds like very interesting work and I’ll hear more about it over the next few months.
John: So just finally, have you got any new developments and events planned over the next few months and any key messages for our listeners?
Hayley: Yes so we have put on another clinic for our fibro scans – that’s on a Thursday morning over in Hartlepool. We continue to do the Friday morning ones here at North Tees.
Our AA meetings obviously in the chapel every Tuesday 4 to 5. All are welcome to that so that’s like family members, patients and staff.
We are doing a one-year run event in July which is open for all staff, that’s going to be in the lecture theatre so keep your eyes peeled for an email about that and register your place. On the agenda will be people from AA, our liver disease training.
John: Just for our listeners what is fibro scanning – what’s that?
Hayley: So fibro scanning is not an ultrasound but what it does is it’s a scan but it kind of like sends vibrations to your liver and it measures the stiffness of your liver.
So if your liver is a little bit stiff that would probably indicate that you’ve got a fatty liver. If it is really quite stiff you would be looking at more of an aerosis of the liver which would need ongoing management really. But your fatty livers can be turned around and they’re the patients that we want to be seeing and getting really so that we can put some support in place for them around their drinking, exercise and diet.
John: Is this a brand new development for a lot of NHS trusts? Is this is just quite a new thing?
Hayley: For the alcohol care teams across the country it is yeah. A lot of the alcohol care teams nationally are doing the fibro scan clinics and we’re lucky to have two clinics on. So yeah it’s all about early detection and prevention, I suppose it’s just picking those things up as early as you can and it doesn’t even have to be I suppose a patient who necessarily has that issue who comes in. We’re just picking something up.
hey might be in for something else and we’re picking that up when they’re in yeah. And the attendance is quite good on the clinics to be honest.
We had some figures back the other day from how many have attended and how many have DNA-ed and how many we’ve referred on for like a consultant gastroenterologist to pick them up and it’s a third which is quite scary really. But these are the patients that we haven’t picked up prior to us being in the hospital.
John: It sounds like there’s lots going on and lots to be excited about over the next few months so hopefully we can get you back on the podcast in a few months time and find out lots of new developments because it all sounds like it is changing very quickly so.
Hayley: Yeah thank you a lot.
John: Thank you very much, we’ll see you soon
Outro: Thank you for joining us. Until next time. You’ve been listening
Episode 1 – The mental impact of stroke
Welcome to our new podcast, NTH Voices.
In our very first episode, we chat with David and Laura, two of our psychologists working in our stroke service. The pair share insights into the impact a stroke can have on mental wellbeing, the questions our patients have, and how their service can support patients in hospital and in the community for up to two years post-stroke.
Episode 1 – The mental impact of stroke
Intro: Welcome to North Tees and Hartlepool voices, telling the stories of our people and community in our Trust.
Laura: Hi guys, we’re just here today to speak a bit about our role on the ward 41, the stroke ward. My name’s Laura.
David: And my name is David.
Laura: And we’re both psychologists that work into the stroke service.
So today we’re just going to have a bit of a general conversation from our experience of seeing and supporting patients on the ward following having a stroke and just thinking about how difficult that can be for patients. And also just to bring in awareness really to the mental health aspects of having physical illness, and in particular having a stroke.
So I don’t know if you want to start, David, but what kind of comes to your mind do you think when you’ve seen patients on the ward who’ve just recently had a stroke?
David: I think what comes to mind initially is that there’s a process of shock and it’s really hard I think for people to sometimes accept what has happened to them. And it brings with it a lot of feelings of loss of independence, questions about stroke, questions about when they’ll be able to go home and it is a process of adjustment.
Laura: Yeah I think you’re right. I think for a lot of people and some people will do well just naturally over time. I think when someone’s first had a stroke, it just comes as a massive surprise I think.
That’s what a lot of people have told me. They’ve said to me ‘you know what I never thought I’d have a stroke, I didn’t think it would happen to me’. Some people have said ‘I didn’t even realise I was having a stroke when I was having a stroke so maybe I deferred getting help and treatment’ and then to turn up in hospital there’s I guess quite a lot of just shock and surprise really about ‘I’ve had a stroke’ and what a stroke means.
I think that’s one of the things that’s really difficult about being on the ward. I think some people on the ward are very unwell when they’ve had a stroke and they’ve got everything that people might think about when someone’s had a stroke. They might not be able to move, they might not be able to speak and might not be able to function very well. And I think on the whole in society that’s the image that we have of people that have had a stroke, that it’s older people that become very frail and they can’t do a right lot. And I think actually that’s not the reality I think when people have a stroke.
There’s so many people on the ward that are working age adults. that are young. They have some difficulties from having a stroke so they might have some difficulty with their speech, with their vision, with their balance. They might have some weakness in one of the arms and legs. Some people might not be able to move, some people might be able to move but actually they’re pretty well functioning after having a stroke and that comes as quite a surprise to people then being this young person that they’ve had a stroke. Or maybe they don’t have some of the obvious complications with having a stroke after.
I don’t know what your thoughts on that are David?
David: I agree with that, Laura. I think, you know in my experience, over the last six months we’ve seen people across the lifespan. You know I’ve seen people in their 20s, 30s up to the 90s so it isn’t limited and I agree with what you were saying about we have this image, this idea as a society that stroke only affects people of old age and that is, you know, patently untrue and I think sometimes that can be really difficult when you’re a younger person or a working age adult person on the ward.
And I think it goes to what you were saying earlier – you see the full spectrum of stroke on the ward as well which can be quite distressing. So you might, you know, depending on what type of stroke you’ve had you might see someone who’s been really affected by it. And I guess one of the things that I talk about with patients is to not make those comparisons. Sometimes it can be unhelpful to make comparisons between the stroke that you’ve had and the stroke that someone else has had.
Laura: Yeah, I think you’re right. I think sometimes the patients can get into that state can’t they? Comparing themselves to others with that comes anxiety and concern about ‘well, why am I okay?’ ‘why are they not okay?’ ‘will that be me?’ ‘will I have another stroke?’ and end up like that and you get a lot of worry don’t you about what that means. Will they have more strokes.
But I think there’s also the other side of that where they really start to worry and then almost feel guilty that they’re not that impaired and that can impact on people. I guess that’s a theme that we’ve seen maybe more towards the community when people are going home.
David: Yes.
Laura: That they’re saying you know ‘am I a fraud?’ ‘did I have a stroke?’ They almost question themselves because they’re not how they think they should be or they’re more functional than they should be. And then it’s like, ‘well do I deserve support?’ Is it okay for me to have difficulties with my mental health because I’m not really impaired? I just can’t speak very well.’ Or ‘I still don’t have the function in one of my left hands’.
And we always say, don’t we, that actually everyone that has a stroke goes through a process of being scared, being anxious, of being worried, of being in shock, having to adjust and process what’s happened to them, coming to terms with maybe physical difficulties as a result of having a stroke, potentially difficulties within their family but also with their mood and mental health. Because I think even if you’re doing okay after you have a stroke, there’s still that worry and anxiety about having another one.
David: Yeah, it’s a big worry isn’t it for a lot of people?
Laura: Yeah, it’s a massive worry for a lot of people. In fact a lot of the people that we see – that’s one of their questions isn’t it? ‘Do I know if I’ll have another stroke?’ and I guess what we say about that is we don’t know but we do know that no one asks to have a stroke. We don’t know if anyone’s going to have another stroke in the future.
But if we spend a lot of time I guess getting caught up in that worries, that can be really negative for our mental health. And it’s really difficult and it’s a process of adjustment but it’s trying to really take things one step at a time, one day at a time and trying to think about getting better and focusing on your rehab at that moment in time. But it’s tough isn’t it? Those comparisons.
David: And I think that’s so important just to pick up on what you said there, Laura, about taking it one day at a time and that it’s temporary, you know?
I think when people come into hospital if they’ve not been in hospital before that in itself is different, they’re in a different environment you know they might be missing their family they might have a lot of certainty around, you know, like you were saying ‘will this happen again?’ and questions around ‘why did this happen?’
And I think as people we like certainty, we want certainty and that question that you mentioned there – ‘will I have another stroke?’ – we hear that a lot don’t we? We hear that on the ward, we hear that in the community, in our group work that we do. And there’s something about wanting that absolute certainty. And I think people can buy into that worry of ‘am I going to have another stroke?’ And it can have a really detrimental impact on their wellbeing.
Laura: It really can. But it’s all an effort isn’t it to try and feel safe, try and prevent something else from happening? And it’s hard to accept that some of the time we don’t have control over these things.
But I guess what you picked up on there as well, David, is that sometimes people can get into this state of blaming themselves for having a stroke as well. And sometimes you have to work with that and say ‘you know what, we don’t always know 100% why people have strokes’. There are certain risk factors, there might be certain things about your diet and exercise that might have increased it, but we don’t know because everyone’s different.
So some people might smoke and drink and never have a stroke and someone might never drink anything in their life and yet have a stroke. So I guess it’s all about interactions, isn’t it, with your body. And we try to move away, don’t we, from kind of working out why someone’s had a stroke because no one asks for it. To just think about what can we do now to look after you.
David: I think that mirrors a lot of my experience on the ward, Laura, as well sometimes when I’ve met people, the question of ‘why have I had a stroke?’ They can be very self-blaming, you know. They can say I’ve smoked or I’ve drank or it’s because of my weight or it’s because I’ve been stressed and they internalise that problem and they attribute it to something that they’ve done.
And I think it’s really important to try and step away from that mindset because the blame, you know, like you were saying it’s not clear what necessarily the causes are. And individual differences will always be present, as it is with any condition, and I think it goes to that process of adjustment as well doesn’t it? Of wanting the certainty of why has this happened to me?
Laura: And I think that’s a natural process for everyone to go through. And that’s what I say to everyone that I meet on the ward is that it’s a process of adjustment and in fact a lot of the patients that I do see will tell me that they’ve started to adjust themselves.
So I think often we will see someone maybe a week after the referral has gone in and what I will get told is they were feeling really low. They were really upset, they were feeling quite anxious when they were initially on the ward.
But now they’ve been on the ward a week, you know what, they’re feeling better and they’re telling me that they’re feeling better because they’re seeing their family, they’re coming to visit, they’re starting to understand what’s happened to them. They’ve started to engage in physio and speech therapy, they’re starting to see progress and so actually that initial shock, that initial distress is starting to lift and for a lot of people this happens naturally, doesn’t it David?
Quite often the people on the ward don’t need a lot of input from us, it’s just about helping them to understand that it’s okay to feel distressed and anxious after a stroke.
Something big has happened to you, something scary has happened to you. Of course you’re going to feel upset, anxious and worried.
David: It goes to what we were saying earlier, doesn’t it, about normalising distress. That it is normal and I think, you know, there’s a tendency I wonder sometimes about pathologising distress and seeing it as being something that needs specialist input.
To pick up on what you were saying, Laura, sometimes we do see people a week after the referrals come in and, you know, once I’ve seen them they’ve said like ‘actually yeah, a week ago when I was speaking with a consultant, I was really distressed but actually I’ve talked about a plan, I’ve got a plan for going home and the physios have already noticed an improvement in my mobility or my speech is getting better’.
And once they can see those incremental increases, those gains on a day-by-day basis or somebody feeding back to them, you know, ‘I can see that you’ve made this improvement’, I think it has a huge impact on their wellbeing. I think that period of time to just make sense of and process what has happened to them is so important.
Laura: Oh, definitely. And I think getting that feedback and getting that improvement in physio and therapy really motivates them as well to continue to do well.
I think the only downside sometimes – one of the difficulties though is that if there then becomes any delay or I guess people aren’t making as good a progress in physiotherapy and speech therapy as they would like, so I think then when maybe they initially started to make progress on the ward, and then they’re starting to struggle, they can get quite frustrated. Because they start to worry about what my life might be going forward, they might start to then blame themselves as well.
So I think one of the things that I’ve noticed when I have met patients on the ward and they’ve not kind of made that natural adjustment or they made that natural adjustment to feeling a bit brighter and they’re starting to struggle again is when they’re getting frustrated with themselves.
And I think when people have had a stroke as well, what’s really difficult is sometimes obviously you can see some of the physical impact when you can’t move and you’re having difficulty with your speech.
But you forget that it’s your brain that’s hurt because you can’t see your brain. Everyone’s used to their brain kind of doing what they want when they want, so thinking for them – making sure they’re breathing, walking, talking, all the rest of it. But then when their brain’s not allowing them to do something because it’s damaged, they start to blame themselves.
So quite often I spend a lot of time with patients and really reinforcing the fact you’ve had a stroke, your brain is hurt, you have a hurt brain, it’s not you that’s struggling because they start to feel like a failure. It’s the fact that your brain’s hurt.
And we then try to compare it and think about, well if you had a broken leg and could see that your leg was broken, would you get angry and frustrated with yourself if you couldn’t walk, if you couldn’t get yourself out of bed? Probably not. You’d probably be much more kind to yourself and understanding, you might be more likely to ask for help.
And it’s the same thing but because you can’t see that your brain’s hurt, particularly if the rest of you is quite well functioning, and maybe you can do everything else that you want to do but your brain’s not letting your think straight or getting your words jumbled, you can get really frustrated. And it’s just reminding yourself when you’re on the ward I think.
I don’t know if this is same when you see patients – ‘you know what, it’s not you, you’ve got a hurt brain, be kind to yourself.
David: And I’ve used that exact terminology, Laura. That if you’ve got a visible difficulty like, you know, a broken leg, it’s visible, it’s easily observable and you wouldn’t expect to climb a ladder, you wouldn’t expect to run a marathon.
But we can’t see the damage to our brain so if you’ve got difficulty with your speech or difficulty with mobility or difficulty with coordination, it’s not easy to observe where that’s coming from or why that is. So it builds a lot of frustration and I think sometimes people can be very self-critical.
And I think that’s sometimes one of the things that I see in people that’ve been on the ward, and I wonder if that’s your experience as well, Laura? They can be really critical about and I think it comes back as well to what you were saying earlier Laura about the idea of feeling like a fraud, you know, that my stroke isn’t as bad as other people.
And, again, being on the ward you see the full spectrum of stroke so it does invite that comparison. And I think it’s really important to remember that, what we were saying, that every stroke is different, that you can’t make those comparisons because we have strokes at different ages, different types of stroke, whether it’s ischemic or hemorrhagic, and also how physically fit the person was before the stroke is a factor as well. Do they have other physical health problems, do they have previous mental health problems?
I wonder, Lauren, in your experience – in mine when I’ve seen people on the ward who’ve struggled with adjustment sometimes it’s because they’ve had previous mental health problems and I think that can make it more difficult to adjust as well.
Laura: Yeah I would say so. I think for some people their life experiences may have been difficult way before the stroke happened and they might have lots of other things going on for them. They might find that they don’t always have strategies to manage their emotions, historically, based on their upbringing or different life events.
And then when you’ve had a stroke, obviously you need ways of managing your emotions and managing difficulties in life. And I think if they don’t have that already, then they’re more likely to find it harder to them to adapt to having a stroke. I think that’s what I would say. I think most people that I’ve seen that maybe don’t have a history of mental health difficulties, haven’t been in kind of secondary mental health services, have adapted quite well while they’ve been on the ward.
I think one of the things that we notice on the ward as well is that actually sometimes the biggest distress about being on the ward isn’t necessarily about having the stroke, but it’s being about being away from family.
David: Yes.
Laura: because being on the ward anyway is tough, you’re in an unfamiliar environment, you’re not in your own safe space where you’re in control, where you have family members around you that you feel supported by and comfortable with.
I think people are different aren’t they and I think some people can adapt to getting support and help from people they don’t know. Other people just don’t like that, it’s not what they’re used to, it’s unfamiliar, particularly if someone’s really independent.
So I think sometimes actually some of the distress about being on the ward isn’t necessarily about the stroke specifically but it’s about that loss of independence and having to rely on people that they don’t know and being away from the family that they would much rather be with.
David: Yeah.
Laura: nd the home environment that makes them feel safe and it’s that breaking relationships that then impacts their mood. But what we often find with those individuals is when they do get home, when they’re thinking about home or when patients’ family members are coming in to see them, that they get brighter, they’re feeling better in themselves. That’s what’s helpful.
And for those individuals, we know lots of people on the ward don’t we, we talk about bringing things in from home that might help them to adjust or to manage while they’re on the ward, particularly if they’re in here for a long time. Things that remind them of family members things that remind them of the comforts and support and love that they’ve got outside of hospital because hospital’s tough isn’t it?
It’s a tough place to be if you’ve got any other physical health difficulties going on, if you’ve got negative experiences of being in hospital or your loved ones of being in hospital, if you’ve had bereavements recently hospitals are even harder.
David: Yeah, completely agree Laura, with everything you said there. And I also think, you know, going back to what you’re saying, a lot of the people that we see on the ward for initial assessments, we often don’t see again once they’re released, post discharge.
And I think it goes to what we’ve been saying today about the normal process of adjustment. Once they’re home, they’re back in their normal environment, they’re with family, they’re being cared for, they’ve had time to process what’s happened to them, the distress reduces significantly and they no longer need or want psychological support in many cases.
Laura: No, I think you’re right. I think that’s the thing, isn’t it? And that’s what amazes me. I think humans always amaze me, just how resilient and adaptive we are really as a species and people do remarkably well without our support.
It is just the odd case, isn’t it, where something where they’ve maybe got a delay in physio on the ward, things haven’t gone quite to plan, they maybe have underlying kind of mental health difficulties where we’ve had to do more with them while they’ve been in hospital.
And I think when people get discharged home, quite often people do really well for a period of time. I think sometimes that changes if maybe, as I said earlier, things aren’t quite going to plan, they’re not getting back to have their previous level of functioning and I think that’s when I guess that loss comes in and I think people forget this quite a lot.
So we often think about loss and grief to do with death and people dying but actually it’s just to do with loss in general. And when someone’s had a stroke if they’ve lost part of what they’re able to do, if they’ve lost where they’re functioning, if they can’t go back to work, they might not feel like themselves. And I think sometimes it’s that grieving process for who they used to be and I think sometimes then people can really strive to be the person that they were before and spend a lot of energy and effort into being that person to no avail.
So I think quite often they’ll try to do things exactly how they used to, not be able to, feel frustrated in themselves but still want to get back to that person so then continue trying to do it. And then it’s about working with people to process that that loss and those kind of feelings of grief but then thinking about, well how can you be the person you are now? Because he still you, it’s just maybe a different version of you going forward so how can we help you to adjust to your life to still do the things that are important to you?
David: Yeah, it’s interesting isn’t it? The idea of, we talked a little bit about normal and I think there’s something really powerful about wanting to get back to normal and we hear this a lot, we hear this on the ward. We hear this also in the community, in our groups and our one-to-one work.
There’s something really strong, I think, about ‘I want to get back to normal’. And I think in some of the people that I’ve met and worked with there’s kind of like a grace period where they’ll allow themselves say a period of time, say six months, and they notice that they’re making progress but once they get to that six-month point sometimes there can be a dip in mental health when people feel that I’m not back to where I thought I was going to be or at this point in time. I thought I would be, in air quotes, ‘back to normal’.
And once there’s a realisation that sets in, I think that there’s a new ‘normal’ and there’s going to be a new sort of equilibrium. I think that is where sometimes people can struggle with their mental health.
Laura: There’s a real sense, isn’t there, of people wanting to be who they were before and I think that always comes through with everyone that we see. And I think, for me, it’s those two themes of ‘I want to be certain that nothing bad’s going to happen to me again’ and ‘what can I do to prevent another stroke happening to me?’ and ‘I just want to be who I was before’.
And it’s tough because I think one of the hardest things about having a stroke is we don’t know if that’s going to be the case and for some people we do know that they will never be who they were before. But other people, we don’t know that.
And it is then a process of adjustment and grief. Kind of coming to some acceptance that you are still you, but things are going to be different and you have to be ready to take that journey and then to engage in therapy around that as well.
David: And engagement is so important isn’t it? We have that conversation a lot in our group work, in our one-to-one, that it has to be right, that we can’t fix people, we can’t fix their mental health and it’s collaborative.
It’s a shared process of psychologists trying to make sense of what it is that they’re struggling with at that time and also thinking about what are the barriers? So where is it that they’re stuck? And I think the biggest, the common pitfalls, and I think you’ve commented on some of them Laura already, are among things like wanting to get back to normal.
I think change in identity, which I think we’ve touched on, is such a huge thing isn’t it? Especially if you’re a working age adult because our job is part of our identity, whether or not we’re a mother, father, son, daughter, friend, partner. We all have different social roles and sometimes a stroke can challenge or change those roles if you’re not able to work, if you’re not able to adapt.
In my experience, Laura, and I’m curious about yours, sometimes the people who struggle to accept the care and the support are the ones who are themselves carers. So if they’ve been a parent and they’ve been used to caring or if they’ve been in a job where they’re used to caring for people professionally, it can sometimes be harder I think for them to accept that support themselves. What’s your experience?
Laura: I think that’s bang on, David. I think that’s my experience and I think it comes from a place of it just feeling really uncomfortable and I think, therefore, sometimes frightening and scary to give up that role.
And I think that might come back to not feeling in control and I think there also comes a doubt of ‘will people be there for me?’ because I think their dynamic within relationships has always been ‘oh, I’ve always looked after other people, will people really do that for me?’ Because this is how I know to get my needs met, this is how I know to make sure that I have those relationships and maintain those relationships. And I think people then become quite frightened of doing things differently.
And I think we often try and say to people to think about things from a compassionate perspective. So to think about actually, what do you think your daughter or friend would say when you said that you didn’t want people to help you or you’d be worried that they wouldn’t want to help you? And quite often they go ‘well, I think they’d be fine with it, like I think they’d want to help me’. But I think they don’t often come to that conclusion themselves, they just become worried because they don’t want to burden other people.
And I think their life has always been about not being a burden but being helpful. So then to not be helpful automatically makes them feel like they’re going to be a burden.
David: And that can have such an impact on recovery, can’t it? Because it comes with all those feelings of guilt and feelings of grief again, and I think what’s underpinning it is difficulty of accepting it.
And we talk a lot in our work about acceptance.
Laura: Yeah and I think it is, isn’t it? We do use acceptance and commitment therapy in a lot of the work we do with patients. And ultimately in that, it talks about how life is really tough, there are difficulties to life. Having a stroke is tough. It’s difficult physically, it’s difficult emotionally and that’s what we’re saying really, just to accept that there are difficulties, there are emotions.
It’s going to be tough but let’s do it together and I think that’s how we work therapeutically, isn’t it? We work with people and sit beside them in their difficulties to see what sense we can make of it together and how we might be able to make it feel less overwhelming.
But it is, it’s about acceptance ultimately when you’ve had a stroke. And I think that’s what’s hard because there’s no other way around it.
David: And I think it’s important to add on the back of that, Laura, as well is that we see people who make enormous improvements in their mental health, people who do move to that place of a new normal for them, people who are able to connect with the things that they value and we do see really positive therapeutic gains.
I think motivation is important, I think engagement. I think one of the things we spend a lot of time talking about doing, especially in our group work, is about tolerating distress and it’s not something to fight. That we all experience negative emotions, we all have difficult thoughts, we all have difficult feelings and these are not abnormal. They’re not bad. Sometimes though we spend a lot of time trying to fight those thoughts and push them away and it’s kind of like adding fuel to the fire, it just exacerbates the distress that’s already there.
And sometimes people spend a lot of time fighting their suffering rather than actually turning towards it and thinking ‘I’m going to embrace what I can do in the moment’.
Laura: Yeah, I think a lot of people don’t really spend so much time trying to be who they were before and to get away from any of the suffering or any of the difficulties that they might now have, that they don’t acknowledge what time they’ve got or what are the positives in their life right now and how they could be spending their time a different way.
David: And people, this is experience on the ward and in the community, some people spend a lot of time hiding that they’ve had a stroke, not wanting other people to know they’ve had a stroke and they might go to great lengths.
So, for example, they might go they might do their shopping in a different town so they don’t bump into people who know them and I think underpinning it is the lack of acceptance of what’s happened and wanting to be seen as ‘normal’. And if somebody I see who knows me knows I’ve had a stroke then it’s like.
Laura: And we speak don’t we to them often about, well what impact does that have on your life? Like how can you still see your friends, how can you still see family members, how can you still do the things that are important to you if you’re not willing to acknowledge that you’ve had a stroke and you’re hiding? Because it’s taken away from you everything that’s important in your life and everything that you enjoy.
And quite often people, when they think about it like that, start to come around to accepting it and actually by preventing others knowing that I’ve had a stroke, it’s stopping me from doing the other things I enjoy in life. Because I don’t want my friend to know, I don’t see her anymore. Or because I don’t want another friend or family member to know or my work to know, I don’t do this anymore or they might not engage in hobbies that they like. And it’s so important, isn’t it, that acceptance really to be able to move forward?
David: And there’s something about being in the now that I think people spend a lot of time imagining a future that they haven’t lived and also living in a past that they have lived, but there’s very little time sometimes spent in the present moment.
And we talk a lot about mindfulness and being present in the here and now, because ultimately this is all we have. We only have now, we don’t have the past because it’s gone, we don’t have a future because we haven’t lived it yet. All we have is here and now.
And we all do this, whether we’ve had a stroke or not, we spend a lot of time ruminating about what’s happened or what we think is going to happen and we get caught up in these really difficult cycles don’t we?
Laura: Oh, so easily. So easily we get really caught up in just thinking and thinking and thinking about things don’t we? And it’s because we want to prevent bad things happening to us and we don’t want to sit with discomfort, we don’t want to be in in pain.
But I think, David, what’s really important to emphasise is so many people that we see do really well following a stroke with their mental health. So many people that then come to see us in the community make huge improvements in their mental health and go on to live really meaningful lives. And it’s a journey for everyone. Everyone’s different.
I guess one of the things that might be important to mention on the podcast is if you’re on the ward and you feel like you might need support or you would like to speak to myself or David, speak to the staff on the ward. We can arrange to come and see you.
But also if you’re listening to this now in the community and you think you might need support in the community, you can always get referred back into us. So we’re here to offer a service for anyone that’s had a stroke for up to two years post-stroke.
One of the main things that we offer as a service is a group therapy which has had just amazing feedback. People get to meet other people that have had a stroke, people that they say are like them and it really normalises some of these difficulties. They learn from each other, they grow together, they learn strategies for me and David to think about things differently and it’s just one of the best groups I’ve ever run really.
David: Yeah.
Laura: So please, if you think you need any kind of support with your mental health. We know that some people are just okay but others, they do want that support and that’s okay too, it’s valid to need that support.
Please just kind of let someone know or get in touch with us directly.
David: Yeah, I would echo that 100%, Laura, yeah.
Laura: Is there anything else that you think might be important for them to know? I think they’ve probably got a whistle stop tour of everything we’ve ever done in stroke psychology.
I think, for me, it’s just remembering that yes, a stroke is a physical illness but it might have an impact on your mental health, it might have an impact on your relationships and I guess the one thing we’ve not mentioned, it can also have an impact on your cognition. So what people don’t always think about is when your brain’s hurt, that impacts your memory and your attention and your understanding and how quickly your brain can think things through.
David: And that’s another thing we offer in the community – we offer neuropsychological assessment to assess in more detail some of the memory or cognitive difficulties you might be experiencing. So if that’s something that you’re concerned about, we would happily accept your referral for that as well.
Laura: So I hope all of you listening are continuing to do well in your journeys post-stroke and potentially me or David will see you on the ward in the future.
Outro: Thank you for joining us. Until next time. You’ve been listening to NTH Voices.