New Venous reporting system addressed by the CEO

A message to all staff from Suzanne Rankin,
Chief Executive

Next month we will be celebrating our Staff Achievement Awards which is one of my absolute favourite ASPH events – our very own Oscars!  Congratulations to all our finalists – announced this week on Aspire – and best of luck in the final awards.

Thinking about the awards reminds me of how much we have to celebrate.  While our working environment continues to be tough, every day colleagues across our hospitals are doing fantastic things to improve care for our patients, often going well beyond that ‘extra mile’.  But what we often don’t do so well is promoting this success and I for one would like to see more of that!

Just last week, Valerie attended the Institute for Healthcare Improvement conference along with colleagues Dr Radcliffe Lisk, Dr Keefai Yeong, Dr Clarence Chikusu and Mark Hinchcliffe.  What they didn’t know was that one of our Junior Doctor colleagues, Joe Gallagher, was also there to present a poster highlighting work he had done on the emergency care pathway in a previous Trust.  What a great achievement – well done Joe!  Keefai also had a poster accepted on the work he is doing with junior doctors on improving patient safety – another achievement for Team ASPH!

Talking this through later in the week, we know there are lots of colleagues who are doing similar things, presenting at conferences, having articles published, undertaking research and so on – and we should be celebrating this.  So from now on, I would like to invite you to send us more of your success stories – don’t hide away, let everyone know how well you’re doing.  In a similar way to our weekly round-up of patient feedback, we’re going to start a regular column in Aspire dedicated to your achievements.  And they don’t all have to be about national conferences and academic publications – whatever you’ve achieved, we’d love to hear about it.  We’d also like to see more stories in the local press – service developments, new pieces of equipment or ways of working – whatever it is, let us know.

So I was really pleased earlier this week when I heard from Consultant Vascular Surgeon, Mr Abdullah Jibawi, who along with a number of colleagues, has developed an innovative classification system for venous diseases that can be used during various types of varicose vein surgery.  This is a really innovative piece of work, as nothing like this has existed before, and has been named the Ashford and St Peter’s Venous Classification system (ASPVCS) after our Trust.  It has also been recognised in a number of national conferences.  What a great piece of work!

Please send your stories to the team at comms@asph.nhs.uk or alternatively just drop me a line.  Your achievements are what makes Team ASPH great and we should make more effort to celebrate that whenever we can.

We were also shortlisted recently in this year’s national CHSK Top Hospitals Awards for Quality of Care to patients – an award we already hold from 2015!  We’ll know if we’ve won the award again later next month and if we do, we’ll be sure to celebrate it with you.

In the meantime, enjoy the weekend whatever you are doing.

With very best wishes,

Suzanne Rankin
Chief Executive