Revised guidance for visitors

Restrictions: With the increase in cases in our local area and the emergence of the omicron variant our visiting restrictions have been tightened to help us maintain social distancing and ensure we are protecting you, our patients and their families as best as we can.

Currently, each patient may have only one named visitor (except for compassionate reasons and by agreement with the ward). This person may visit for one hour each day.

You can view the full guidance including how maternity restrictions differ here.

Advice for visitors: We have also produced a leaflet for visitors which should be given to them on arrival to the ward. These have been distributed to all wards and can also be found here.

Catch up on our chief executive's end of year briefing

You can watch a recording of Wednesday's staff briefing here. This included an update on our preparations for a rise in omicron cases, reflections on the busy winter period so far and outlines of our plans for the next few weeks from our chief executive Debbie Fleming and executive colleagues.

The slides of the briefing are also available here.

The latest HR Q&A covering a range of Covid-19 related topics is out now. This has been updated to include new information on self-isolating, and maintaining services and staff absences. We also have an updated Q&A following the briefing last week on mandatory vaccines for NHS frontline staff available here.

Obtaining new lateral flow kits

NHS England is no longer supplying the trust with lateral flow testing kits for us all to use. This means when our stock runs out, you need to order your tests via www.gov.uk/order-coronavirus-rapid-lateral-flow-tests.

If there are no tests available to be posted to you, please check https://maps.test-and-trace.nhs.uk/ for where to collect lateral flow tests in person locally.

Well done to our Christmas decoration competition winners!

Thank you to everyone who entered our Christmas decoration competition. We had so many brilliant entries so choosing our finalists was very difficult, but we chose based on the creativity matched with those that made us smile and brought us festive cheer.

We put the final vote to the public, and the two winners were…. our orthoptic department, with a special mention to senior orthoptist Beth's festive snowman hair decoration, and a beautiful tree decorated by our dementia and delirium team.

Thank you to the NHS from the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge

The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, patrons of NHS Charities Together, have issued a special thank you to the NHS. You can read their letter here.

An update from our single PAS project team

The single PAS project team, informatics and operational teams have made significant progress towards the UHD PAS going live on 1 March. These include developments in outpatients, theatres, inpatients, medical secretariat and business intelligence.

The PAS team would like to say a big thank you to everyone who has contributed their time and effort to getting us this far.

Outpatients:

• Clinic Builds are in progress on the UHD PAS, and several specialties have already been completed.
• Exciting Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is being developed to support the migration of appointments.
• Testing has commenced on the Outpatients and patient demographic IT feeds to ensure they will work correctly in the single PAS.

Theatres:

• All new RBH and PH Theatre names and codes are now built in UHD PAS.
• Discussions are underway around implementing a single UHD waiting list with identifiers in place to differentiate between PH and RBCH patients.

Inpatients:

• Discussions are progressing to agree an approach to inpatient processes during the UHD PAS move to ensure service continuity.

Medical secretariat:

• Letter template details have been discussed and confirmed.
• A draft SOP has been developed to standardise correspondence guidelines.

Business Intelligence:

• 79/399 reports have been merged so far - please continue supporting BI with identifying any reports that your departments will continue to need access to in the UHD PAS.

For further information or to get involved, please check out the UHD Patient Administration System (PAS) intranet page.

Safe use of oxygen cylinders

Oxygen should be considered a high risk medicine which must be prescribed. It should only be administered and connected by registered staff who have been appropriately trained to do so and transferring a patients oxygen supply from piped to portable/cylinder is the responsibility of a registered practitioner.

When setting up an oxygen cylinder for use always ensure that the grey safety tab has been removed and the supply switched on.

The oxygen distance learning pack (DLP) must be completed by registered practitioners who are undergoing medicines management as a new competency. It is also recommended as a refresher for staff who have already completed the competency but not the additional DLP.

Click here for the RBCH training package and here for the Poole training package.

Make your New Year's resolution to learn from LERNs

Learning Event Report Notification (LERN) forms are replacing the Adverse Incident Reporting (AIRs) and Datix forms across UHD.

The four forms are for when:

• a patient or staff safety incident has occurred and someone has, or could have come to harm
• you need to raise a safety issue
• something has been, or someone has, done really well
• you have a safety improvement idea

Sharing concerns and reporting incidents allows us to improve safety standards, support high quality care and reduce harm. Sharing information about something working well can help others have this success too.

Completing a LERN form when something goes right or wrong or if you have a suggestion for improvement.

Find out more on the LERN intranet pages.

RBH: Marsden scale checks in January

An engineer will be on site to check all Marsden scales from 10 – 13 January and 17 to 19 January.

Please ensure your scales are available for inspection.

RBH: Nuclear Medicine referrals made easy

When requesting nuclear medicine procedures from ICE, please select the PHT RAD tab at the top and then the NM tab on the side.

This will allow you to see and select any nuclear medicine study and ensure the referral does not get mis-coded, or lost.

Trust in the media

Our communications team works with the media to help get key messages to the public about our operational priorities and also to shine a spotlight on the work of our staff. Please do contact us at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. with any stories that we should be featuring.

You can catch up on this week's news reports on UHD from BBC Breakfast, BBC South Today and ITV Meridian on our YouTube channel. This week the unsung heroes of our hospitals also featured in the Bournemouth Daily Echo as did interviews with Dr Matt Thomas, Eoin Scott and Bruce Hopkins.

The Brief in 2022!

The Brief is your monthly magazine, packed full of the latest news, events and features about Team UHD. Thanks to all those who have contributed to its success in 2021 – we want to hear from more of you in 2022!

You can find a publication schedule for The Brief in 2022 on our communications intranet pages. Pop the dates in your diaries and send any content to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

If you haven't seen it yet, your December issue of The Brief is a festive special and printed copies have been distributed across the trust. You can also read it online here.

Stay alert to potential phishing emails

NHS organisations are experiencing increased phishing email activity, where a sender pretends to be someone else in order to obtain sensitive information.

Please make sure you follow these cyber security precautions:

• If the email looks suspicious, has a link or attachment, don't click on it, report it to our IT team
• If in doubt – think and look carefully before taking any action – ask IT for guidance or advice
• Be particularly wary emails request personal or sensitive information
• Always use strong, unique passwords for all systems, and don't share them with anyone
• Set up multi factor authentication (MFA) where available

Dorset Clinical Research Centre (DCRC) staff photography competition

Are you a budding photographer, do you have an eye for a good picture, or maybe are just someone who likes to share memories? Whether you are experienced in deciding which shutter speed to use or simply like to grab your iPhone to capture the moment, this competition could be for you.

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

The team are looking for images that represent this unit, our local Dorset heritage, or something that might represent hope and opportunity for the future. We do ask that submissions do not have images of the general public for confidentiality reasons.

If you are interested in taking part, email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. for the entry form.

Photographs should be:

• A minimum of 300dpi – the greater the resolution the better!
• llow 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 14 January 2022 it will be judged anonymously and results will be announced by email 4 February. Good luck!

Merry Christmas from Beryl

Our friends at Beryl bikes have offered UHD staff 30 minutes free on every Beryl bike ride taken on New Year's Eve and New Years Day. This is to say thank you for all of our hard work and support this year.

The discount will be automatically applied, all you need to do is sign up to the Beryl app using your UHD email address.

Your wellbeing weekly

For wellbeing and emotional support over the festive period, our mental health first aiders, OurDorset health and wellbeing hub and a range of NHS helplines are available. You can find these on our updated intranet pages.

Our You Matter intranet pages have been updated to include more apps, podcasts, videos and wellbeing tools than ever before, so take some time for yourself to take a look at the range of support we have on offer.

Next week's bulletin will arrive on Thursday (30 December)

Due to the bank holidays there will be just one bulletin next week, on Thursday (30 December).

The communications team would like to wish the whole of Team UHD a very happy Christmas. Thank you all for working with us throughout the year on our publications, news reports, social media, events and more.

It's a pleasure for us to work with you to share your stories and news, and we look forward to sharing all of the amazing things we are sure you will do next year.