3 / Ground-breaking proton beam therapy 4&5 / What’s … Story/Insi… · · 2016-01-25Inside Story spoke to the programme leads for the Care Delivery System to find out more

January 2016

3 / Ground-breaking proton beam therapy4&5 / What’s next for uclh future?7 / Welome to new cancer colleagues

InsideStoryNov2015.indd 1 08/01/2016 16:32:10

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There will be only two NHS-funded centres in the UK providing high-energy proton beam therapy – one at UCLH and the other at the Christie in Manchester. The panels provide an overview of the therapy and how it can be used to treat patients.

“It’s great that we are helping patients, the public and staff understand why we are bringing proton beam therapy to the UK. The benefits of such targeted treatment will be reduced damage to surrounding tissue, reducing some of the long term effects of treatment. I’m really excited about the new centre and its potential to improve patients’ outcomes.” – Yen-Ching Chang, clinical lead for PBT.

News

Meet the teamProduced and designed by: The communications department

Front cover photo: Chief executive Sir Robert Naylor with UCLH chairman Richard Murley

Inside Story magazine is published by UCLH (University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust) for our staff

Contact usIf you have any information you would like included in Inside Story, or on Insight, contact: Communications Unit, 2nd Floor Central, 250 Euston Road, London NW1 2PG. Email: [email protected], Tel: ext 79118, Fax: ext 79401. Visit us online at: uclh.nhs.uk

Bringing Phase Four to lifeThe building site for Phase Four has come to life with new giant panels featuring UCLH staff and patients. Showcasing UCLH’s top quality care, excellent education and world class research, the panels explain what will be in the building, promote our continued recruitment drive and highlight the national proton beam therapy centres fundraising campaign.

Proton beam therapy

File on phase four: > The site is on the corner of Grafton Way,

Huntley Street and Tottenham Court Road. > There are nine clinical floors: five above

ground and four below. > Height above ground will be 29m and below

ground will be 25m. > Proton beam therapy will be provided in

the floors below ground. There will be four gantries and three NHS PBT treatment rooms.

> Eight operating theatres for short stay surgery. > A 20-bed ward for surgery patients requiring a

short stay. > Four haematology and bone marrow transplant

wards with 127 single beds and a 10-bedded critical care unit.

Members of the PBT team

Construction started – the first part of the construction was digging down and developing supporting structures.

PBT equipment and commissioning: each gantry weighs around 120 tonnes.

During 2019 the build completes and the first patient is seen.

2015

2018

2019

Construction milestones


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To support our continued drive to recruit the best calibre staff, we have tried a number of initiatives to promote why UCLH is the place to be. One of these includes featuring two of our excellent nurses Gifty Howusu and Helen O’Toole on the Phase Four panels.

Helen is the lead nurse for pre-registration and nurse education and works

in partnership with London South Bank, City University and King’s College London. Helen said “My team and I support UCLH nurses who mentor students in practice, providing them with the skills and knowledge they need to work for us when they have qualified.”

Gifty is a senior staff nurse who works in haematology and oncology day care at the Macmillan Cancer Centre. “I feel highly honoured, especially hearing some lovely comments from patients who say my picture actually cheers them up. I am planning to bring my children to come and see my picture on the hoardings.”

This and other initiatives have seen our nursing vacancy rate drop from 16.2 per cent in May to 8.8 per cent in November 2015. Chief nurse Flo Panel-Coates shared how proud she was of the effort made to improve patient care by reducing our vacancies and added what “A great start to 2016.”

Bringing Phase Four to life

A game changer for patients

Taking pride of place on the corner of Tottenham Court Road and Grafton Way is a picture of Lennie Anderton. Now four, and in his first year at school, Lennie was 15 months old when he had proton beam therapy in the USA to treat Ewing’s sarcoma of the skull. His family’s experience of going overseas for treatment as part of the NHS treatment programme underlines how the new centre will transform care for patients.

Kath Anderton, Lennie’s mum said: “It is just a brilliant thing that there will be a

proton beam therapy centre here. When I think back to when we had to take a very, very sick child on a very, very long flight, it would have been really amazing to be able to stay in our house with all of the support we normally have and go and get the treatment in London.”

The panels also promote the fundraising work UCLH and The Christie are doing to support the new centres. Together, they aim to raise £20 million.Members of the PBT te

am

Recruitment

During the ground-breaking ceremony last month, Health Secretary Rt. Hon. Jeremy Hunt MP was joined by patient Keeva Hanbury, and actor and blood cancer campaigner, Julian Rhind-Tutt, as they officially ‘broke the ground’ at the site of UCLH’s new integrated proton beam therapy (PBT) and specialist cancer and surgical treatment facility.

Sir Robert Naylor, UCLH chief executive, said: “To have work underway on this long-awaited centre is tremendous news. This will be a game-changer for Londoners and other NHS patients who will benefit from local access to advanced treatments.”

Fundraising

Construction milestones

Jeremy Hunt addressing the crowd at our ground-breaking event


uclh future4

So now that planning and design for our transformation programme, uclh future, is under our belt, what happens next? There’s a concerted drive across UCLH to put into action the ideas which have been developed over the last 12 months, working on how we can improve staff and patients’ experience of UCLH both in the short-term and in the future. What can staff and patients expect in the coming months? Inside Story spoke to the programme leads for the Care Delivery System to find out more.

uclh future – the next steps

What seems to be the problem?

“We have an opportunity to radically improve the care we provide for people who live with complex long-term conditions. Our system for offering outpatient appointments at fixed intervals in our hospital doesn’t fully serve many of our patients. Our patients often come a long way to see our excellent clinicians; they need to access specialist care when they are ill and access support to manage their own condition between visits.”

What are we going to do about it?

“We’re helping clinicians redesign services, and develop the supporting technology and processes to provide better services for our patients.”

Give us an example.

“Paediatric diabetes. Our patients are from across north-central London and need specialist input from our clinicians but currently have to miss school to attend appointments at hospital. We’ll soon be piloting Skype consultations which will reduce travel for some routine visits.”

What will come next?

“We’re running phase one programmes with paediatric diabetes and maternity between now and April with a view to expanding to other services across UCLH in the future.”


“Bluntly, our patient administration processes don’t match up to the standards of our clinical services. They don’t make it easy for patients to access services. We don’t support our administrative staff enough and our services are fragmented, which makes it hard to standardise with best practice.”


“We’re going to introduce new UCLH-wide systems and processes including new technology for producing clinical letters. We’ll design a UCLH way of booking and patient administration and we’re going to support and enable staff to deliver.”

Give us an example.

“We’re in the procurement stage for a new clinical letters system and in the New Year we’ll be talking to administrative teams about how processes and roles should change to make sure they are fit for the future.”


“We’ll be making sure patients get the most effective reminders for outpatients’ appointments and introduce new and improved appointment letters. The letters system is already rolled out in the cancer division and working well.”

Programmes of care – Improving management of long-term conditionsProgramme lead: Rishi Das-Gupta, head of operations, medicine board

Patient admin – making life easier for patientsProgramme leads: Naser Turabi, head of the access and patient administration programme


uclh future 5


“Our elective care processes aren’t consistent, and we waste a lot of staff and patient time because of it. Theatre time isn’t being used as well as it could be.”


“We’re looking at all elective care across UCLH and how it can be improved. That includes the pathways themselves – setting guidance for staff on what should happen when, and feeding that into the EHRS procurement process – as well as pre-assessment.”

Give us an example.

“How can we change pre-assessment to target patients early on? Could we run a pilot of electronic consent that offers standardisation and reduces bureaucracy? Can we improve theatre effectiveness, through clinical and non-clinical staff working together to produce their own improved service?”


“We’re working with the team at Westmoreland Street to identify problems in the current ways of working. We are working with cystectomy and upper GI to rework their pathways so that they work better for patients, and for us.”


Alison: “We delay our patients getting to our beds and they wait too long on a trolley in the emergency department and in recovery. We don’t plan as well as we should.”

Charles: “On the day we also need to make sure that patients don’t wait for anything by having the right care at the right time in the right place, first time. We need to stop admitting patients on to the wrong ward.”


Alison: “In the short-term we’ll fix it by planning our demand and capacity better, to make sure every patient coming through our doors on any given day will reach a bed in time. We’ll reduce wasted time for staff, improve patient’s experience of their time

with us and achieve operational excellence.“Long-term, we’re going to form a

coordination centre to oversee patient flow across UCLH.”

Give us an example.

Charles: “We’ll use real-time information and make sure operationally everyone is doing things the same way, so that we’re all working together for our patients. IT enhancements will help us to do that, and a resource tracking solution together with an EHRS will really give us lift-off in the future.”


Charles: “By this March all wards will have introduced the exemplar discharge process, getting people Home for Lunch.”


“I think we don’t all take the same approach to get to the desired outcome: we all want to treat patents as quickly as possible in a safe way. If people knew each other’s contributions better we could improve that immediately.”


“I’m trying to make better communication part of patient pathways. I’m trying to connect people. I’ve been really amazed by how many people from different specialties don’t know each other. If we walk in each other’s shoes that will change really quickly.”

Give us an example.

“OK: community acquired pneumonia – we’ve had staff from A&E, respiratory, infection control and pharmacy working together on a shared vision to prevent and treat patients better, deliver better pathways and think about the next opportunity.”


“We’ve started things rolling and that’s great, now it’s time to pause, review and reflect: is this the right way?”

Elective pathways – taking the drama out of theatresProgramme leads: Jo Hunter, head of operations, surgery and cancer and Claire Miller, project manager

Coordination centre – preparing for take-offProgramme leads: Alison Clements, head of operations, medicine board and Charles House, associate medical director, tower operations

Urgent care – connecting staff to improve patient careProgramme leads: Breid O’Brien, head of urgent care pathway transformation

Claire Miller


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What seems to be the problem?“As a nurse I feel passionate about making it easier for clinical staff to do the right thing and the exemplar ward programme has been designed by clinical staff and patients to do just that.

“I think our ward teams provide some excellent care. However there is variation in standards and our staff say they are not always clear what is expected of them. The Exemplar programme will make explicit the standard outcomes we expect on our wards and provide staff with the means to achieve them. At the moment systems and processes are not standardised and that can be frustrating.”


“We’re introducing an accreditation system (good, great, and exemplar) so that each ward has a clear understanding of where their successes lie and the areas where they need to make changes. The Exemplar

team will work with the Institute and other colleagues to support ward teams to continually improve the service they provide. We also want to recognise and celebrate success!”

Give us an example.

“One improvement project will be the Exemplar roster, to improve ward staffing levels through more effective roster practice. Staff will be given all the support to make it happen.”


“You will see a number of changes this year: Exemplar accreditation assessments begin in March so wards will know how they are doing and what they need to improve; The Exemplar rostering project starts in February; and Exemplar discharge is currently being rolled out and will be complete by 1 April to standardise patient discharge.”


“Too many patients are having to wait too long to get an MRI scan or endoscopy test. Diagnostic services play a critical role in all clinical care – we need to make sure we are using our resources as efficiently as possible. This is particularly important as we strive to increase early diagnosis as part of our wider cancer strategy.


“We want to make it easier for our clinicians and managers to plan and deliver high quality diagnostic services. We will be looking at a number of different ways to do this, including improving our performance metrics and data, upgrading our demand and capacity modelling, and streamlining requesting, booking and reporting processes. We will also be rolling out One Stop Services as far as possible

so that patients can come in to hospital and have all their diagnostic tests and initial appointment in one go.”

Give us an example.

“We are planning the implementation of a new Pathology Order Comms system to enable doctors to request blood tests online. This new IT system will make it much easier for doctors to request tests and will also give us better intelligence about what types of test we are requesting and at what cost.”


“We will be kicking off a series of projects this year, including the roll-out of One Stop Services and an Imaging Perfect Week.Please get in touch with me if you are interested in getting involved in the Programme.”

Exemplar Ward – going from good to outstanding Programme leads: Natasha Phillips, assistant chief nurse

Diagnostics – making sure patients have the tests they need when they need themProgramme leads: Antonia Williams, head of diagnostics programme, uclh future


7In the know

Care certificates – we’re leading the wayThe smiles say it all. Hard work and perseverance paid off for these theatre support, nursing and midwifery assistants who were among the first UCLH staff to be awarded their Care Certificates.

Sixty seven unregistered clinical (band 2-4) staff completed the training programme which was introduced this year as part of a national drive to raise standards across the NHS. A further 55 are progressing through the course.

Chief nurse Flo Panel-Cotes, who presented the certificates at a special ceremony at West Moreland Street, said: “You have, no doubt, spent a lot of time and energy completing the programme. It is down to your hard work…you are among the legion of staff that make sure our patients receive the best quality of care possible. Well done.”

Unregistered clinical staff are assessed on a wide range of skills and knowledge, following the Francis Report and Cavendish Review which recommended a national approach to training and career development.

From 2016 onwards, around 1000 UCLH staff will be expected to complete the training, with the support of UCLH programme lead Jane Connor and her team.

Cancer services transfer

UCLH has welcomed 30 new staff from the Royal Free Hospital following the transfer of the haemato-oncology service and the care of 1800 patients. When it moves into phase four in 2019, the service will be the biggest of its kind in Europe.

New ward sister Sonia Thomas said it was rewarding and challenging to help create a brand new haematology ward at University College Hospital. She added: “The new staff from the Royal Free are enthusiastic and have fitted in well within the team.” Senior matron Stephen Rowley welcomed the new staff, “I’ve been very impressed with the manner and speed in which the staff from the Royal Free have settled in.”

This is part of a wider plan to centralise specialist cancer services at UCLH. Last month oesophago-gastric (OG), Urology and Head and Neck surgery transferred to UCLH from Barts Health and Barking Havering and Redbridge – a growth of 420 surgical cases a year.

Ward sister Sonia Thomas (centre) with l-r: nurses Pantelis Savvides and Amy Mullins who transferred from the Royal Free.


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Hoardings surrounding the east wing of The Middlesex Hospital during its rebuilding in the 1920s and 1930s. How times have changed – look at what is being advertised on the hoardings. In 2016, our thoughts turn to Dry January the health campaign encouraging people to cut out alcohol.www.dryjanuary.org.uk

Love the archive? Follow UCLH on instagram for more archive gems. #artsheritage

Inside out

There’s nothing like a discussion about Star Wars to divide the galaxy. Geeky, space-nerdy nonsense filled with odd characters and incomprehensible names? Or an intergalactic explosion of mind-bendingly magic possibilities?

Lee Thompson-Downes is in no doubt.

“I’ve seen Star Wars hundreds and hundreds of times. Actually, probably thousands of times. Last weekend I spent about six hours watching the whole trilogy in one sitting. I know every plot line, every sentence. Unfortunately it’s not a passion my girlfriend Natalie shares and there is sometimes a grappling with the TV remote,” says Lee, a medical workforce co-ordinator.

As a five-year-old boy, Lee was given ‘A New Hope’ by his aunt, the first of the ground-breaking space movies. That was the start of it. “The idea of space, droides, light sabres, the huge

universe with limitless options reached out to me. It fired my imagination then, and it still does.”

Han Solo, Jabba The Hutt, R2D2, Yoda, Chewbacca and Jedi Obi Wan Kenobi have all got under his skin. Quite literally.

“I had a Yoda tattoo first– and then I just carried on,” he says, proudly rolling up

his shirt sleeves to show two armfuls of colourful inkings.

“Which character would I choose to be? The Jedi. He’s a hero who saves the day and tries to be a better person to those around him. Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia are a bit whiny and dull. Although Darth Vader used to absolutely terrify me when I found out he was Luke’s father, I understood his pain. It blew my mind.”

Lee was similarly spell bound while watching (twice in one weekend) the latest, critically acclaimed movie The Force Awakens.’ Incredible’,’ awesome’ ‘everything I hoped for’.

The force is with him. Is it with you?

Archive

Secret lives

Darth Vader and his troopers went down a storm when they visited young patients at University College Hospital in 2005.


Documents

3 / Ground-breaking proton beam therapy 4&5 / What’s … Story/Insi… · · 2016-01-25Inside Story spoke to the programme leads for the Care Delivery System to find out more