Esteem to the end

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Amy Ellis, mortuary manager and her team at Viapath, running the mortuary at Kings College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust adopted a flexible approach to an overwhelming increase in workload. Within one month the number of deceased had doubled to 260, an alarming number when you consider that the mortuary only has space for 86 patients. Working a seven-day week, twelve hours a day they were also involved in the set-up of a temporary mortuary unit at Denmark Hill, now providing room for 480 patients, providing peace of mind for families that their loved ones are still being cared for by the mortuary team at the hospital.

Similarly, at Wrightington Wigan & Leigh NHS Foundation Trust, Kathleen Robinson, mortuary & bereavement service manager and her team have been nominated for their outstanding professionalism and initiative in the way they have worked together with bereavement and registration services to improve and streamline the processes and procedures to ensure deceased COVID-19 patients that passed away in the hospital or local authority were cared for with respect and dignity throughout the time that they were within their care.

So many of the Esteem nominations have been in praise of teams coming together, often having not worked with each other before. The High Dependency Unit at Central North West London NHS Trust have united as one team; doctors, nurses, OTs, psychologists, health care assistants, activity co-ordinators and an art therapist, all supporting each other to ensure the smooth running of the unit.

Malcolm Birch, director of clinical physics and the clinical engineering team at London Nightingale Hospital and Barts Health NHS played a critical role in London’s response to COVID-19. The team is not only responsible for the 4 hospital sites of Barts Health but also became responsible for the London Nightingale hospital. Over a span of a few weeks the CE team commissioned 1000s of new medical devices, many never used before, providing technical support and clinical training ensuring patient safety.

The COVID-19 Upskilling Group at South Devon NHS Foundation Trust, established in just one month, brought together a small group of staff including AHPs and nurses with links to the education and R & D departments as well as representatives of the community teams and trust operations. Together they have trained over 700 staff including AHPs reassigned during the initial COVID-19 response, in areas such as vital signs,  identifying the deteriorating patient, basic hygiene care, basic life support and patient manual handling through a mixture of virtual and socially distanced face-to-face sessions – with a focus on the impact of reassignment on staff wellbeing.

Throughout the pandemic OTs have played their part, none more so than Gill Currie, paediatric OT at NHS Lanarkshire who worked in the neonatal unit providing support to the nursing staff on the important aspects of a paediatric OT and advising how they work with infants and their families to allow them to reach developmental potential.

At Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board Tina Owen and the children’s occupational therapy team have worked at pace to redesign the service and look at new ways of working with children in order to maintain services, sharing their ideas and creativity whilst maintaining the child at the centre of all decisions.

Shonaid McCabe, primary care OT lead and the team at NHS Lanarkshire are a new unit most of whom had just completed their induction in March. They fully embraced the immediate changes that were imposed upon them as a consequence of the pandemic, redeploying to other areas almost straightaway. They’ve learned new skills including phlebotomy and medicines management to support nursing and homecare colleagues in addition to supporting the development of C19 patient education, and OT staff training resources or advice about working from home.

And at South Eastern Health and Social Care Trust, Sharon McClenahan, OT technical Instructor in mental health has endeavoured to solve the problem of doing patient personal laundry which the Trust was unable to sustain due to COVID-19.  Sharon sourced laundry facilities in another Trust premises and collected, laundered and returned clothes to patients on a daily basis to ensure their dignity was respected and that they did not have to resort to wearing disposable pyjamas.

Sharon is one of many examples of AHPs and healthcare scientists going above and beyond at this time. You can still nominate a colleague for Advancing Healthcare Esteem here to show your appreciation.

 

 

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