Fortnightly community update from our CEO - 23 March 2021

Posted Tuesday, March 23, 2021 4:01 PM

23 March 2021 – Update 16 

An update to patients, communities and partners of Sherwood Forest Hospitals NHS FT 

Hello, 

In the last fortnight we have been proud and humbled to receive two national recognitions for the work we do here at Sherwood. The first was the publication of the NHS Staff Survey results. The survey is sent to all NHS organisations asking colleagues a range of questions about how they find the Trust as a place to work and the quality of care. In 2020, for the third year running, Sherwood Forest Hospitals was the top hospital in the Midlands. This is a great result and reflects our commitment to make this a great place to work and an outstanding place to receive care. 

The second was the Health Service Journal Awards, which looks at NHS organisations across the country in a range of categories. The top award is the Acute/Specialist Trust of the Year and we were delighted to find out last week that we won this prestigious award. This accolade belongs to the colleagues and volunteers who work here, the patients we care for, our communities and our friends and family. Thank you for your support. 

Today we are treating 39 Covid positive patients in our hospitals, five of whom are in ITU. This is a huge reduction from the beginning of the year and has enabled us to make some changes to enable some limited visiting and also to increase our elective care. Since last year we had a very limited visiting policy in order to prevent further infection, but we have always understood how difficult this is for patients and their loved ones and have been regularly reviewing our position. 

We have now been able to cautiously reopen visiting for patients who have been with us for seven days or more. These patients will be able to have one nominated visitor who can visit for one hour three times a week. We know that this is less than patients and families would like but it allows us to maintain a balance between patients’ emotional needs and managing the risk.  Other visiting policies remain unchanged Sherwood Forest Hospitals (sfh-tr.nhs.uk) 

Although this has been a fortnight of celebration, it has also been time for reflection. 15 March 2021 marked one year since we admitted and treated our first Covid positive patient and last week we held remembrance services across our three sites. 

If you would like to hear more about anything I have talked about in this update, or have any questions, then we will be hosting our regular Community Briefing on Wednesday 31 March, at 5pm. You can join by following this link https://bit.ly/3rfN9Ky.

 

Best wishes for the week ahead.

Richard Mitchell
Chief Executive
Richard.Mitchell2@nhs.net

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