Catch up on yesterday's Covid-19 vaccination staff Q&A session

Thanks to everyone who attended the briefing on Covid-19 vaccinations, the national move to make these mandatory, the new Omicron variant and how to book your jab, hosted by Professor Alyson O'Donnell, chief medical officer. The session heard from a range of UHD experts, covering topics including HR issues, clinical effectiveness and common concerns.

The panel answered dozens of staff questions, from how mandatory vaccines might be implemented, guidance for staff who are immunosuppressed, pregnant or trying to conceive, as well as exemptions – watch it here.

We'll also be publishing a Q&A based on the session next week – look out for it in the bulletin.

Siobhan Harrington announced as new chief executive for UHD

Siobhan Harrington has been appointed as chief executive of University Hospitals Dorset NHS Foundation Trust and will take up her role on 1 June 2022. Siobhan will succeed Debbie Fleming, who announced in September this year that she would be retiring from the NHS on 31 March 2022.

Siobhan is an experienced director in the NHS and has been chief executive of Whittington Health NHS Trust in London since 2017. Read more here.

Supporting staff - hot food on-the-go from our catering department

There are now vending machines in the atrium at RBH and the Dolphin Restaurant at Poole which include food that can be heated up to provide you with a hot tasty snack outside of our usual catering hours.

We will be increasing the variety of the options in our vending machines in the coming months to give better food choices to our colleagues out of hours.

In light of the challenging Covid-19 situation, our senior teams are also working together to explore more options to provide on-the-go nutrition to our support staff.

How to book Covid-19 swabbing with our swabbing teams

Please could all departments referring patients to our Covid-19 swabbing team before elective procedures use these new email addresses:

Poole: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

RBCH: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

All departments referring staff members and household members for Covid PCR swabs to complete this referral form and email it to:

For Poole staff and all children under 12 years, send email to: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

For Bournemouth and Christchurch staff and children over 12 years, send email to: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Thank you to everyone who joined our Christmas Schwartz Round

If you missed the Schwartz Round on Kindness yesterday you can catch up here.

If you have any feedback on the session that you would like to share please fill out this survey.

Updated care groups and operations structure available

The latest version of our care groups and operations structure table details our senior clinical and non-clinical management roles and is available to download here.

RBH: a reminder about staff parking

There have been recent examples of inappropriate parking outside ED and the UTC which is blocking ambulance and patient drop off parking in the area - this can cause patient safety issues.

Whether the car has a valid parking permit or not, a Parking Charge Notice (PCN) will be issued to protect these spaces.

We are aware that staff may be called to work in these departments at short notice and in this case there is a 'consultant on call' permit which can be given to those called in. This permits you to park in the spaces at the education centre and provides quick access to the hospital.

If you want to register interest for one of these permits or have any other questions regarding staff parking please contact This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

You can find the latest staff briefing Q&As, including responses to many queries related to staff parking, here.

Deadline to order Christmas meals is today

If you are on duty on Christmas Day morning, you are entitled to a voucher up to the value of £3 to buy breakfast. If you are on duty Christmas Day evening or night, you can get a snack bag. Snack bags are to be picked up from the restaurant between 1-2pm on Christmas Day.

To receive your vouchers/snack bags, please ensure you get your numbers into the catering department no later than Friday 17 December. This can only be done by using the eforms portal.

You can access the portal through Google Chrome > managed bookmarks > clinical systems –> electronic forms (eforms) and search 'catering hospitality form' to access the form.

You will be asked for a cost centre – please note you will not be charged for the vouchers against it. You will then be notified when the vouchers are ready for collection. Please see the posters for breakfast and dinner for more information.

Haematology departments are changing method for the erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR)

From the 15 of December at the RBH and from 16 of December at Poole the haematology department will be changing the analytical platform for its ESR tests and will be moving back to a Westergren method.

You should see no difference when ordering through ICE and the sample requirement of one 4mL EDTA tube will not have changed.

Reference ranges have been checked on the local population and have been found to be similar to those currently in use. However there may be a reduction in the ESR result for patients with high ESR values.

Please ensure the EDTA sample is at least half filled as the ESR test requires at least 1.4 ml of blood.

Paediatric samples will initially be run on the existing platform as we will not have enough volume in a single paediatric sample. We are currently investigating other options for this patient cohort.

The department will also be changing the full blood count analysers at the same time, but based on our verification work we do not expected you to see any difference in the values reported and the normal ranges will be staying the same.

RBH: Equipment library cover over Christmas

Over Christmas the equipment library will be covered as follows:

25 December - by porters through the SISO system. If you need any assistance please contact them by bleep 2108.

26 December – by EQL staff from 09am-1pm and by porters through the SISO system from 1-8pm.

27 and 28 December and Monday 3 January - bank holidays by EQL staff from 8am-12pm and by porters through SISO system from 12-8pm.

Any equipment request needs to be done through the SISO system, which can be found here.

Please note that SISO has been upgraded from the old version 5.4 to 5.7 and the new version will not work with Internet Explorer.

For any assistance please contact EQL on ext 4493 and porters on bleep 2108.

If this looks like your Pa55w@rd, get ready to update

Passwords are everywhere in life, performing the vital role of protecting confidential information from being accessed by those it is not intended for. So it's important to ensure you use strong, hard to guess passwords every time.

A new feature is being rolled out across Microsoft systems that encourages staff to avoid the common practice of swapping letters or symbols for similar-looking characters, like the example in the headline above. These swaps are well known to those who try to access data unlawfully, so now, when your password has expired and it's time to choose a new one, any password that looks as though it uses character substitutions will be rejected, and you will be asked to enter another, stronger one.

This is also really good practice away from work – consider whether you need to update your own passwords for personal accounts at home too.

Register your Point of Care testing device for our audit

Point of Care is conducting an audit of which POCT devices are currently in use across UHD.

If you use any kind of device on your ward or clinic to test blood or urine from a patient instead of sending a sample to the main laboratory, please can one person be nominated to register every POCT device with as much information as possible using the POCT e-forms portal (found under managed bookmarks – clinical systems on google chrome trust devices).

If you have any questions, please contact This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Help our porters by disposing of your cardboard properly

When disposing of cardboard please flat pack it before leaving it out for our porters to collect to help to make sure this waste can be recycled through our onsite baler.

Our porters don't have to time to flat pack the volume of cardboard which is currently being produced and any help with this would be very much appreciated. We do not wish to see any of this cardboard ending up in the general waste.

RBH: Food trolley collections

Please can all wards make sure that food trolleys are put out in the main corridors for collection when they are finished with.

Electronic fit test reporting now in place

Electronic reporting is now in place replacing our current paper report.

This will make fit testing simpler and will collate information for reporting purposes. All designated fit testers are asked to read the updated information and important changes, available on the Infection Control pages of the intranet.

Business intelligence will continue to develop the form to enable managers to extract reports and provide information directly to ESR, but until that is completed the fit testing team will provide monthly data available as they also add retrospective data from July 2021 to the online reporting.

Run the London marathon for our charity

The London Marathon will be returning on Sunday 2 October 2022. UHD Charity is excited to announce that this year, they have secured eight spaces.

If you'd like to take on the challenge of 26.2 miles to raise money for our hospitals, you can enter our marathon ballot, which will be drawn in February.

To enter, simply complete the form here, share your details and tell us why you'd like to run for #teamUHD.

You'll receive the full support of the charity team to help you achieve your fundraising target which includes motivational meet ups, a fundraising pack and a UHD Charity technical running vest.

Don't forget if you have received a place directly through the TCS London Marathon's public ballot, you can still be a part of #teamUHD and raise money for the Royal Bournemouth, Poole and Christchurch hospitals. Simply contact us by emailing This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. for a fundraising pack.

Fraud warning – look out for emails from rhs.net

Our fraud team has let us know there have been cases of fraud where the fraudsters are imitating the ESR system. Emails were received from fraudster using @esrnhs.top email addresses.

The email states that there is a problem with an individual's national insurance number, and requests that they log-in to update their personal information via a link provided within the email.

Please remain vigilant when reading and responding to your emails, and if you receive one of these emails delete it and report to our IT team.

Join this week's ProAbility meeting

We are all welcome to join the ProAbility network's next network session. The open session will be offering peer support from the network following the developments of the new Covid-19 variant.

The session runs on Tuesday (21 December) on Teams from 1.30-2pm click here to join.

If you missed out on our talks with Dr Hannah Barham-Brown and Dr Liz O'Riordan you can catch up via the links on the ProAbility intranet page.

ICB chief executive arrangements

Last month Patricia Miller, currently chief executive of Dorset County Hospital, was successfully appointed to the role of chief executive designate for Dorset's new Integrated Care Board (ICB).

She will be starting in her new role from 1 February. While DCH works to recruit a permanent CEO appointment, deputy chief executive, Nick Johnson, will take over as interim chief executive from 1 February 2022.

Are you a budding photographer?

Do you have an eye for a good picture, or maybe are just someone who likes to share memories? No matter your level of experience this competition could be for you.

We are running a staff competition to select photos to brighten up the walls in our new DCRC; part of the new Dorset Clinical Trial Unit which is due to open in Spring of 2022.

The Dorset Clinical Research Centre and Dorset Clinical Trials Unit is an exciting new venture for our research department and will create new opportunities to set up and host research in the Dorset area and beyond – supporting local researchers and offering opportunities for local residents to take part in shaping the future of potential new treatment opportunities.

We are looking for staff to submit images that represent this unit, our local Dorset heritage, or something that might represent hope and opportunity for the future. Recognisable, or abstract – we will look forward to viewing your creations. We do ask that submissions do not have images of the general public for confidentiality reasons.

If you are interested in taking part, please complete the attached form and submit your photo to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Photographs should be:

• A minimum of 300dpi – the greater the resolution the better!
• Allow for a 3-5mm bleed area (i.e. we would be able to crop up to 5mm at the edge when printing at scale)
• Be in PDF, AI, PSD or JPeg format

Competition closes at 5pm on Friday 14 January, when it will be judged anonymously by a group from UHD research and development. Results will be announced by email on Friday 4 February.

Your wellbeing weekly

Check out our weekly wellbeing pages for all the latest offers to help you stay well over the festive period including advice for international colleagues spending their first winter in the UK, self-care webinars and much more.